Human wars are often about money. This war was about honey.

The tornado on Sept. 16, which destroyed thousands of trees citywide, ripped a large branch off a tree on South Oxford Street, revealing a honeybee colony nestled in the fork of the London plane. The fallen limb left a gaping hole in the hive, making it vulnerable to attack from marauding bees from other colonies. A group of “robber bees” of unknown but local origin swarmed in and stole all the honey.

“It was a mess,” said James Fischer, an apiary expert. “The colony could not be saved.”

In the bee world, spring is a time of peace, when pollen abounds and the bees are busy harvesting. But when the leaves start to fall, honeybees get grumpy. Fall is the time of bee warfare. So the storm struck South Oxford Street at a time when the natural hostility between bee colonies was at its seasonal high.

Mr. Fischer, who teaches beekeeping classes for New York City Beekeeping, a nonprofit organization, says bees aren’t so different from humans. “If you were to tear all the windows out of Macy’s, people might shoplift.”

Mr. Fischer led an attempt to save and relocate the colony on Friday.

A group of local beekeepers removed sections of honeycomb from the damaged hive and put them into an artificial hive made of wooden frames in a white cardboard box.

“The hope is the bees would go into the box and the queen would follow,” said John Howe, a Fort Greene beekeeper and the founder of the NYC Beekeeping Meet-Up.

But that didn’t happen. The queen was never found and the robber bees stole all the honey. Even if they had been able to move the colony, the bees wouldn’t have survived the winter without their honey, Mr. Fischer said. “By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, it was already too late.”

The London plane tree was also a casualty of the tornado, damaged so badly that the Parks Department removed it on Tuesday. The falling branch broke a second-floor window and landed on two cars, said Frederick Whitfield, who has lived directly across from the tree for 20 years.

The brownstone block, which is just south of Fort Greene Park, is lined with trees. But that London plane was special.

“That was my favorite tree on the block,” said Mr. Whitfield, who wasn’t aware of the beehive above his head. “I’m going to miss it.”

Nan Doyle, another block resident, also had a soft spot for the giant tree.

“We were sad to see this tree go because it was the oldest tree on the block I think, and certainly one of the largest,” said Ms. Doyle.

On Wednesday, Ms. Doyle was watching Mr. Howe remove the last evidence of the bee-tree saga. Ignoring the robber bees buzzing around him and trying to get one last bit of honey before returning to their own hives, he pulled each wooden frame out of the box and dumped the decaying honeycomb into a garbage bag.

Mr. Howe left with the white bee box, leaving only a stump behind as evidence of the greatest battle ever fought in the most-loved tree on South Oxford Street.

cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/flight-of-the-honey-bees/

Sept. 23, 2010