Bees!

Did you ever think that having wasps or yellow-jackets would be the good option? Me neither. But in this case, it would have been the lesser of two evils.

My client is scheduled for a house inspection tomorrow morning. While I was talking with the gal at the inspector's office yesterday, I mentioned that I had seen some bees the last time I was out at the house. She hesitated a second and then asked "How many?" I told her I really don't know, but it looked like at least a dozen and they were up by the roof. She hesitated again and then suggested that we might need to get a bee guy out to at least confirm the bees weren't a swarm. So I called around and found a guy.

I met the bug man at the property at 9:00 am. By 9:02, he had told me that the insects flying around the eaves were definitely not wasps. They were honeybees. That's better than nasty wasps, right? Apparently only if you want to avoid getting stung. No, if you want the easiest and cheapest insect removal, pray for wasps. Because honeybees build honeycombs. Filled with honey. And you can't just remove the bees.

Here's a bit of information you might not know. Honeybees spend their time fanning their wings and cooling the honey. If you just take the bees, the honey starts to get warm. And then it melts. Into your walls. We live in Arizona. It was over 110 degrees today. It's not going to take a whole lot of time for the honey to get everywhere. In my client's new home.

So we went ahead and had the bees and honeycomb removed. At the end of the day the bug man removed between 85-100 pounds of honey from the attic. The cost was ridiculous, but the bees are gone and the roof is back together.

I sent my camera up with the contractor and he got this picture:



And this one:



I took this one from the ground while the bug man held this part of the comb over the edge for me:



My client is ready to weep. She just wants to move out of the hotel she's been living in for the last month and into her new home. On the bright side, as least when she does finally move in, the previous occupants won't still be living there.

At the end of the day, other than the fact that this was a clients house, it was really pretty cool to see.