It becomes visibly agitated around the mouth of its entrance.

The colony whines in a centerless loud drone that vibrates the neighborhood. It begins to spit out masses of bees, as if it were emptying not only its guts but its soul.

A poltergeist-like storm of tiny wills materializes over the hive box. It grows to be a small dark cloud of purpose, opaque with life. Boosted by a tremendous buzzing racket, the ghost slowly rises into the sky, leaving behind the empty box and quiet bafflement.

The German theosophist Rudolf Steiner writes lucidly in his otherwise kooky Nine Lectures on Bees: "Just as the human soul takes leave of the body...one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul."

For many years Mark Thompson, a beekeeper local to my area, had the bizarre urge to build a Live-In Hive-an active bee home you could visit by inserting your head into it. He was working in a yard once when a beehive spewed a swarm of bees "like a flow of black lava, dissolving, then taking wing." The black cloud coalesced into a 20-foot-round black halo of 30,000 bees that hovered, UFO-like, six feet off the ground, exactly at eye level. The flickering insect halo began to drift slowly away, keeping a constant six feet above the earth. It was a Live-In Hive dream come true.

-Kevin Kelly from Out of Control