On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 09:05:26 +0100, Tim Mitchell
babbled like a waterfall and said:

While we were out yesterday, our neighbour says that a swarm of bees
gathered around a tree in our garden (would've liked to have seen it,
shame we were out). Apparently it stayed a bit and then flew on.

However there are still about 20 or 30 bees hanging around the tree.
They are all landing on a particular spot on one branch and taking off
again. My theory was that they had somehow got separated from the main
swarm but could smell (or something) where it had been on the tree and
keep going back there. But am no expert on bees, so maybe one of our
resident uk.diy bee experts can explain what they are doing.

The site on the branch had the chemistry of the Queen on it. They
simply made for it. In the absence of further signals they will just
die off.