Swarmed

There has been quite a bit going on lately and because of this I haven’t really had the time to post as often as I would like. Just to start the process of catching up, I'll tell you about the most exciting of my recent adventures.

Last weekend a swarm of bees decided to start a hive in our backyard particularly inside our patio ceiling. It was easily one of the most interesting and worrisome things I have ever had front row seats to. On Sunday when it started, there were 4-10 bees floating around the patio at any given time and by Monday afternoon there were 20-50, as one would enter an opening in the patio another would come flying in from the sky to join the squadron flying around, almost as if they were sending radio signals back and forth to each other (not really into bees I’m sure a real nature buff will email and tell me that’s precisely what they were doing) but in any case it was pretty surreal to watch it happening.

The bill for removing a hive can range anywhere from $150 to nearly $600 so it was fortunate that the bees weren’t able to successfully establish their hive and apparently the life span of the worker bee is only a couple of days, so defeated they began to climb out of the patio and fall to their deaths. At first I was relived but after a while I began to get frustrated. You see, in just a couple days over a thousand bees had made their way into my patio and now they were piled up all over the patio floor dead. Needless to say it was quite a mess.

It took a couple hours, a broom an electric blower and a water hose but the patio is now cleaner than ever. And while the wifey still looks up cautiously before stepping out of the house and onto the patio its fair to say things are pretty much back to normal.