Bee Gone! We hope...

Saturday was a big day for the bees – moving day. Moving is stressful for any family, but imagine having several hundred children and being forcibly evicted from your comfy new home. At least the evicters were nice enough to provide a new home.

When Jim and Tammy Sue first pulled the siding off the house, it looked like it would be nearly impossible to find and remove the bees. Amazingly, there were a couple of loose bricks at exactly the right place so they could get in and reach the hive.

Check out the honeycomb those busy bodies were building. It's beautiful. Jim pulled it out and put it in the bee box. The honey had a light, sweet flavor that Tammy Sue absolutely loved. She normally won't eat honey. It dripped and gooped all over the place when he moved the hive, so there were bees everywhere trying to recover it. There were even some bees from another hive that came by looking for freebies, which resulted in a few territorial squabbles.

The most important thing about moving a hive is getting the queen to move too. Jim used a brush to encourage load after load of bees to follow the honeycomb into the box, but he never saw the queen. Eventually, when the bees appeared to be adjusting to the move, and when serious rain was imminent, they boarded the house back up and sealed it up.

Then Sunday, we found an active hole in the caulk, and I could hear serious buzzing from deep inside the house. Crudola, I thought. I was just sure that meant they did not get the queen, and we'd have to do major surgery to get her out. A couple hours later, the buzzing was gone, and they had all but abandoned the hole in the house. I hope, I hope, I hope that means they have finally moved out for good.