May 30, 2025: The Swarm Above

It was the strangest call I’ve ever received.

One afternoon as a teenager, home alone, the phone rang. My neighbor’s voice came through, breathless.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “Get out. Right now. Come to my driveway, and don’t cut across your yard.”

Excuse me, what?

But I obeyed. Sprinting outside, I instantly heard a loud, otherworldly buzz filling the air. My friend stood at the edge of his lawn, pointing toward my roof.

When I turned, my jaw dropped.

I saw something I’d never seen before or since. If only I had a camera.

Hovering above my home, circling in a slow churn, was a massive cloud of bees. Thousands of them. A black swarm. One by one, they drifted down my chimney and inside the living room through a tiny crack.

Uh, nope. Not cool.

My neighbors contacted a beekeeper, and thankfully, he arrived in about thirty minutes.

I watched in amazement at how this guy operated. Slipping on a special suit, he grabbed equipment and climbed a ladder to the housetop. Then he used a pole and fished around inside the brick column, a thick cluster surrounding him.

Moments later, he descended and officially proclaimed, “All done!”

“How?” we asked.

“I caught the queen.” He smiled, adjusting his hat. “Once you catch her, it’s over. The rest just leave.”

Sure enough, the bees quickly disappeared. The sky cleared. Tragedy averted.

I thought about that experience today after what happened to Kate, my daughter. As she walked into work, something shifted in her hair.

At first, she dismissed it as the wind. Then she felt movement again.

And after running her fingers through her curls, she found a bug had just flown in. She doesn’t like insects, no matter the size, especially when they decide to hitch a ride on her head.

But thankfully, it flittered away without harm. No queen. No beekeeper required.

Just one mildly traumatized young lady.

And once again, tragedy averted.