Unbeelievable

So, the bee removal took place this past weekend, which I am now referring to as The Weekend From Hell. The bee crew showed up bright and early at 9 am in good spirits believing this was going to be a no-brainer in bee removal.

Here they are tearing off the roof to our bay window, secure in their previous experience that this is where the hive and the honeycomb would be.

As it turns out, the hive was living in THE BASE of the bay window, the entrance just happened to be at the roof line. So the whole operation was moved indoors to our bedroom. The room we SLEEP in. After plastic and paper were covering all remaining furniture and the closet door secured they began tearing apart the 80 year old lathe and plaster beneath our window. There used to be a horrid built-in against that wall which we removed seconds after signing on the house. Apparently the previous owners thought it would be a good idea to line the floor inside the built-in with urine soaked carpet. The smell was unbelievable. The point of that little story is to explain the bits of tape on the wall which are covering the ragged holes left from the railroad ties they used to attach the built-in to the wall.

Early stages of wall removal.

OH, HOLY SHIT!

There aren't even WORDS for this. The sound and smell were so overpowering and once they kicked on the vacuum I was out of there. Not that changing rooms made much of a difference. That infernal Bee Vacuum was on for a solid 6 HOURS.

After most of the hive had been removed, they started chiseling away at the honeycomb and before you ask, NO, we did not keep any of it. It was the most revolting stuff and besides they needed to take it for the bees, something about feeding. After the honeycomb was outta there they rubbed everything down with almond extract to "descent" the space so new bees would not be attracted to the same area, they sprayed a hornet/wasp killer, then stuffed our walls with formaldehyde-free insulation and my sanity returned.

From start to finish this whole process took a little over 8 hours and our bedroom STILL smells like almond extract. Overpowering, ALMOND scent.

Dowry

Manager's Special

If It's Not One Thing...

Good News: We found a company that specializes in removing bees without demolishing our living quarters. They are coming next Friday to "assess" the situation and their quote was actually reasonable.

Bad News: With all the recent rainfall the two windows at the front of the house have started leaking. So we have had an eclectic collection of receptacles gathering all the drips, dribbles, and drops which can be heard from every corner of the house. yippee.

Our Sweet Dilemma

A few years ago, when Kris and I first moved into our house we noticed a little bit of bee action going on over by the bay window attached to the master bedroom. In all honesty, the house is too old to have a "real" master bedroom, it's really just the larger room on the main floor. Larger by about 4 inches. Anyway, there were these bees busily buzzing and doing what bees do best. We really didn't think to much about it because what could possibly be bad about having some honeybees on our property.

The following summer they disappeared. POOF. No more bees. Not one. Which made our lives a lot easier since we didn't know the first thing about extracting hives from our bedroom walls. We assumed it was part of the whole Bees Disappearing Phenomenon and continued with our lives as usual.

Big Mistake.

Last summer they reappeard. VOILA. Hundreds of bees swarming around one corner of our window.

One fine summer day Kris and I were standing inside watching the bees and wondering what the hell we are going to do about it when Kris came up with an idea, more of an experiment to see how big the hive is. So he pops out to the garage and returns with a drill and proceeds to carve a hole in the wall beneath the window which would be about 5' below the bee's point of entry outside. Lo and behold, honey dripped out of the wall. ACTUAL HONEY. The drill bit was covered in honey. Kris tasted it and it tasted like honey. So, we realized that our small problem was now quite a huge problem. After pressing our ears to the wall we were able to figure out the majority of the space the bees were borrowing without our permission. It's quite extensive. We can't hang pictures on one wall of our room for several reasons: 1) the 70 year-old lathe and plaster crumbles if you so much as breathe too deeply so you can imagine what a small nail would do. You wouldn't believe the size of the holes I had to patch when we first moved in you would of thought the previous owners were using softballs to hang art. 2) we have the world's largest fucking bee hive living in our house.

So we shopped around for ways to get them removed without gassing the shit out of them since honeybees are practically an endangered species and all. Except there don't seem to be any options for people who want to remove a hive without damaging it. All anyone wanted to do was tear an enormous hole in our house, terminate the bees or else take them for their own honey laundering business, and leave us to rebuild half of our bedroom. All for a small fortune akin to sending your first and second born to an Ivy League Institution. Now I understand that these bees can't live in our walls forever, that just isn't practical but I firmly believe there has to be more reasonable options than the onese we have been presented with. I just don't know what they are. Yet.

As of this very moment the bees are still living in our house and it's pretty apparent they have no intention of moving out anytime soon without some very serious coaxing.

Crap.

Poppies

Tripping through the Tulips

In the midst of our lives, we must find the magic that makes our souls soar