Carrie was in the Studio and I was nearby washing fishpond filters.  When I stopped spraying the hose, I heard an unfamiliar buzzing and looked up to see bees, lots and lots of bees, swarming in the pepper tree only 12 feet or so over my head.  

I summoned Carrie.  We crouched on the Studio porch and watched the scattered roiling flying buzzing bees coalesce into a near solid and near quiet mass.  

We went inside to research swarming bees and learned that a swarm of 1500 to 30,000 bees is a temporary stopover on the way to finding and occupying a new hive.  More temporary than we thought as they had already moved on by the time we went back out to look.