Bee hive - Mad bees - what to do?!

There's a pretty big bee hive in one of our front trees. Wouldn't have noticed it except for something must've disturbed it today and zillions of bees were flying around looking pretty mad. Needless to say I am freaked. What should I do? Who to call?

 

Run!

 

Nuke'em from orbit.

OK - where are you? I have some experience in this. PM me.

 

OK, so we learned a lot tonight! Turns out it was a swarm and not a hive (still scary looking though). ;-) The Loudoun Beekepers Assoc has a Swarm List - a list of volunteers that will come remove them free of charge and take them to their farm. Here is the link:
http://www.loudounbee.org/swarmlist.htm

 

i just read a news story about a puppy attacked by bees- glad to know these folks exist!

 

Good! I was gonna bag'em & toast'em.

 

It was reported that swarms are very prevalent this year. When the hives get too crowded, the drones start feeding one of the larvae royal jelly to make a new queen. Then the new queen takes her army and goes in search of a new home. Glad you called the association.

 

Actually, the queen takes her "worker" bees with her. "Army" pertains to ants.

 

The old queen leaves before the new one hatches...otherwise they'd try to kill each other. Same reason the first thing the new queen does is consume her would-be royal sisters.

 

That's right - the old queen goes with the swarm. Facinating process...

 

Good thing a wise neighbor drove by and gave krmckee some good advice about the bees!

 

Bees (honey bees) are essential to the human food chain and are in real crisis. Glad they could be removed and farmed elsewhere.

 

I wonder who that may have been????

I would say 95% of the swarm was removed but a few bees remain on the tree... could the queen still be there?