A Warm Place

Sunday, 10 August 2008

• The Latest Buzz

  One of my neighbors waved hello, and we struck up a conversation. Not an out-of-the-ordinary occurance, but soon the topic swerved to something strange.

  "Oh, by the way," she started, "my kids mentioned that they saw a lot of bees around your house when they were getting into their car."

  I was rather intrigued - I hadn't seen any bees around, and I tend to notice them pretty quickly. Bees aren't my favorite creature, and I get pretty nervous around them. I asked her if she could point to where they were, and she led me to one of my basement windows. Then she dropped the bomb; "Yeah, they said they've never seen so many bees."

  This was not what I wanted to hear, especially not associated with my house. Upon closer investigation, there was a small hole in my foundation, right where the stone met the wood of the house, and every second or so a bee or two would fly in and out. They weren't wasps, and they weren't the angry yellow jackets I'd encountered in the past. They were little brownish bees, that didn't seem to mind that I was standing a couple feet away from them. They looked almost like honey bees... but what did I know?

  Not a week later, my apiary ambassador blogged about how she had just gotten a call from someone who had a load of bees in a hollowed-out tree near them. She and a couple others had gone and hauled it off to her house. Since I've heard about how the bee population is on the decline, and gassing the little guys seemed a bit harsh because they had done so little to me, I sent her a message asking if she knew of anyone in my area that did a similar deed.

  She responded back with a list of names, and I gave the closest guy - Dan - a call. We discussed the details of what I had, and he concluded that I had a decent-sized hive of honey bees living in my walls. He also let me know that it was important that they pulled out the honeycombs with the hive, because if you killed the bees you'd still have a bunch of dead bees and honey rotting and fermenting in the walls. Not a good idea. He said he'd have to cut open the wall, and that he could be there the next day. He also mentioned that if he said to 'get out' while they were doing their thing, that I shouldn't ask questions. Like he'd have to tell me twice.

  That morning, Dan pulled up in a pickup with another beekeeper in the passenger seat. They took a look at the bees coming in and out, and started drilling holes in the siding to see if they could locate the hive. Luckily, the bees had kept pretty close to a single area, so it wasn't too hard. They put on some gear, and started cutting.

  

  Immediately there was a cloud of bees surrounding the guy with the saw, and immediately I was twenty feet away. Like I said, not overly fond of bees, and there were quite a few of them. The picture doesn't really show how many bees were flying around at one time. He started by removing the siding, then a chunk of the exterior wall, and then he started pulling out honeycombs.

  

  Dan brought me over one to show me what they were pulling out. He actually gave me one to keep for myself, so I could get some honey out of this whole operation. This one in particular he rubber-banded into one of his frames for the bees to use. Dan's plan was to set most of the honeycomb into a frame, and let my bees make him some honey over where he lives.

  

  After they pulled out all of the honeycombs, they brought out their - I kid you not - bee vaccum. They sucked up a bunch of them lining the cavity where the hive was, and left it to suck up most of the rest of them while they had a glass of water. Did I mention that this all happened in ninety degree heat?

  

  After they were done vaccuming up most of the bees, they took off the black exterior of their vaccum and revealed a little cage on the inside, filled with bees. "How many do you think are in there?" I asked Dan. "Oh, I dunno, looks to be about ten thousand," he replied cooly.

  Holy shiiiit. I had ten thousand honeybees in a two by one foot chunk of my wall, and I didn't notice at all.

  With that, they drove off to Sandy's Clam Bar with ten thousand bees in the back of their pickup. I was left with a hole in my wall, and a honeycomb full of honey. Not too bad for a Saturday afternoon.

  

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