In his backyard in the Town of Newburgh, beekeeper Larry Perlitz inspected one of his hives that he suspects caused a nearby swarm, and found two queen bees.

“Oh, there she is, right there,” he said as he spotted the queen among the sea of bees from one slide. “That’s our other queen.”

Perlitz said it was important that he located the second queen.

“I may have prevented another swarm,” he said as he closed up the man-made hive.

Perlitz said that if a second queen were to emerge in the same hive, there may be a “fight to the death” between the competing queens, or one queen may fly away followed by half the hive to swarm a light post or tree.

He said these are temporary swarms. It usually takes a few hours up to a few days for the bees to leave to their permanent home to make honey. That is when the lives of bees and humans may intersect.

Perlitz posted video on Facebook from swarm calls on which he assisted. One shows thousands of bees in a fully involved hive — their ‘permanent home’ — in the crawl space of a local home. Relocating such a hive is known among beekeepers as a ‘cut-out.’

“That’s a swarm that’s already found a colony, that’s already found a new home,” Perlitz explained. “They’re already establishing a new home. That’s where things can get kind of expensive - once you have to go inside somebody’s home, residence or business, to cut them out.”

So if you see a swarm in your yard that is not endangering anyone, “they’re not staying,” Perlitz advised. “There’s no need to panic.”

If you happen to see bees going in and out of small holes or cracks in your home, it is likely time to call a local expert like Perlitz.