Some days are normal, forgettable days but some days stand out in my memory. A few weeks ago I had one of those stand out days. Let me explain:
For the last year or so my neighbor has had a bee hive in the walls of her house. Yep, in her house. She once told me that at night she could hear them buzzing around in the hive. Yeah, that gave me the willies.
Every once in a while, if I left the light on in our play/craft room (it’s the room in my house that’s closest to the bees) at night, I’d wake to find a dozen or so dead bees. Apparently, they’re like moths and follow the light but they don’t live through the night.
A few weeks ago she hired a bee keeper/pest control guy to come out and remove the hive. Here’s how it went down:
First, he removed a few outer boards of the house and smoked them to calm the bees:
Once he had all the boards off, you could see the hive. It wasn’t what I expected. Instead of being a big round thing, it was vertical; in between the studs:
Then he “vacuumed” them into a bucket:
He removed the hives, one by one, and put them into his box.
See this box full of bees?
That’s thirty thousand bees. Thir-tee-thousand.
He let my neighbor keep a bunch of the hive with the honey inside. It tasted really sweet, but if you look closely, it’s a tad gross with the bees still inside:
And she was kind enough to share her loot with us!
It was so much fun to watch the whole thing unfold. The bee keeper was a hoot who was formally allergic to bee stings but then he had lymph node cancer and had them removed. Once he took care of that, he was no longer allergic. Crazy, right?
Freckles and Fences 