Those honeybees that showed up last summer went away during the winter. I breathed a sigh of relief. One sigh...that's all I got.
The little critters showed up again this year and took up residence in the cozy space of a small roof overhang above the front bedroom windows. They'd hang out every sunny afternoon on the Western exterior wall of the house, only moving into the undoubtedly hot space as the day cooled down.
Knowing about the decline in the honeybee population, I knew this wayward swarm had to be saved. So I asked a beekeeper from Bee Magic in Sebastopol to come to 620, extract them, and give them a new home.
Glenn and his 11 year old son Caleb vacuumed the bees into a large wooden box and stacked all the honeycombs into a big Rubbermaid container. To get access to to the majority of the bees he had to remove the original "rooflet," shake shingles and all.
Here he is hoovering up some bees after he had begun to remove the little roof. By the time he finished six hours later, he estimated that he had extracted 30,000 bees.
He will take the bees and honeycombs to a hive on his land in Sebastopol, 25 miles southwest of here. First he will line the new hive with the honeycombs. Then release the bees with their queen into their new hive. The bees will do a major repair job on the combs so everything looks like new again. And once more everyone will be part of a big happy family!
I think I'll wait a few days before I go up a ladder to fill the empty space with rigid insulation, seal the entry spaces between the shiplap siding boards, and cut and install some new rounded shake shingles. Give all the little buzzing stragglers a chance to realize that Her Majesty is no longer there and they've been left behind. Give them time to think about finding a bee orphanage somewhere else!
And then, we'll get the repair job done so everything looks like "old" again! It's a rare opportunity that I get to give back to nature, which constantly gives so much to me.
