Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Prepare for the search. Dress in light-colored clothing. It attracts the bees and deters other woodland pests like ticks and deer flies. Make a batch of homemade nectar to attract bees so you can follow them to your tree. Mix six parts sugar with one part honey, and add enough water to dissolve the sugar and make the mixture watery, not syrupy. Gather the rest of your equipment.
Find a good luring spot. Look for an open area near the woods. There should be wild flowering plants nearby -- clover, goldenrod, or even milkweed. Set down your shallow dish and fill it with your homemade nectar.
Observe the bees. Once a bee comes to check out the nectar, watch it carefully, but don't follow it. Wait for it to eat and return, and hopefully bring more bees. Time how long it takes between bees. Three minutes or less means you are close to a wild bee hive, less than 1/4 mile. Five to 10 minutes means the hive is about half a mile away. Ten to 20 minutes tells you the hive is a mile away -- bees seldom forage farther than one mile from their home. When the bee leaves your dish of nectar and zooms off in a straight line, it's time to look for that hive.
Follow the bee. Use your compass to make sure you are moving in a straight line and try to keep the bee within sight with your binoculars. Check all potential trees on the way. A good bee tree will be large with a hole in it. If you're lucky, you will see other bees in the area, which will indicate that you are even closer. The hole in the tree where the bees enter can be 3 feet off the ground or 30 feet off the ground. Listen carefully for buzzing -- that will tell you if bees are in the tree.
Mark the tree. Mark your location on your GPS or tie some plastic ribbon around the trunk so you can find the tree again in the future to see if the bees are still there.