Wild honeybee nest, Henne

Maybe it's simply a matter of fate, or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm reading a fascinating and charming book called Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting, which was written by Cornell biologist Tom Seeley. But whatever the cause, I found, entirely by chance, a hive of wild honey bees that I probably should have noticed years ago. The bees had built their hive in a Red Maple no more than 15 feet behind the observation boardwalk at the Henne preserve, an area I visit, in season, about once a week. Tom Seeley's book is an instruction manual on the art of finding a hive in the woods, and had I used his methodology, maybe I'd have located the Henne bees earlier by design. Instead, I turned around and, by happenstance, noticed what was there in plain sight—if I'd just looked right... and had my eyes open.