Bees

Got a Bee in your bonnet? Well, Jennifer and I do or rather many bees in the coping of our house. About a week ago while we spent a long morning waking up one Saturday we noticed a lot of commotion outside our second story window. Later on I took a look outside and noticed that bees were coming and going about the yard. Looking at the second story coping I saw the little critters entering and exiting a small hole in the enclosed coping of the house where two surfaces come together. Maybe the gap in the fascia could have been prevented by better construction techniques, which knows. Got to love the Chinese don’t you. The fact remains that a swarm of bees has taken up residence with us and must be dealt with. Who among you has experience with this problem please come forward pronto?

Being the ever-curious person I took it upon myself to do a little investigation about bees. Honey bees are such productive little creatures never resting during the day but serving their queen tirelessly from first light until late dusk. I found this description somewhere on the web about honey bees.
HONEY BEES (Apis mellifera)

The honey bee was introduced into the United States in Colonial America. Honeybees are highly social insects and communicate with each other, relaying direction and distance of nectar and pollen sources. Bees make combs of waxen cells placed side by side that provide spaces to rear young and to store honey. The bee colony lives on the stored honey throughout winters, and therefore, can persist for years. When colony populations are high, the queen may move part of the colony to new harborage. Bees swarm at this time, usually finding hollow trees to begin their new colony, but they occasionally work their way into building wall voids.

Drones are male bees and they have no stingers. Drones do not collect food or pollen from flowers. Their sole purpose is to mate with the queen. Yaaaa Baby!! If the colony is short on food, drones are often kicked out of the hive. Oh No Mr. Bill!! Workers, which are the smallest bees in the colony, are undeveloped females. A colony can have up to 60,000 workers. The life span of a worker bee depends upon the time of year. Her life expectancy can be as long as 35 days. Workers feed the queen and larvae, guard the hive entrance and help to keep the hive cool by fanning their wings. Worker bees also collect nectar to make honey. In addition, honey bees produce wax comb. The comb is composed of hexagonal cells, which have walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.
Honey bees’ wings stroke over 11,000 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.

A honey bee colony in a house wall can cause major problems. The bees can chew through the wall and fly inside. Their storage of large amounts of honey invites other bees and wasps. Their detritus (e.g., dead bees, shedded larval skins, wax caps from combs and other material) attracts beetles and moths. When a bee colony is found in a building wall, it must be killed. Killing can be accomplished in the same way as killing yellowjackets in wall voids is done. Listen to the bee noise from inside rooms to locate the exact position of the nest in the wall to assure that the whole colony is treated. After the colony is dead, remove the nest. If the nest is not removed, the wax combs — normally cooled by the bees — will melt and allow honey to flow down through the walls. Honey stain can never be removed; the walls will have to be replaced. As well, the freed honey attracts robber bees and wasps. The comb wax will attract wax moths that may persist for several years. The dead bees attract carpet beetles.

Sounds lovely doesn’t it! Well after checking with a few local joker experts, I have enlisted the help of a couple of fools to help me rid our house of its bee problem. Am I worried about the honey melting down our walls and attracting wax moths for years? Not really worried about this too much …. its only been a couple of weeks since the little muggers showed up and have not had time to build a new Trade Centre. So we will see what happens.

The plan is to stuff the gap in the coping full of steel wool after spraying the hell out of their little home with some local bee killer stuff I picked up today at the Ace hardware. The steel wool will keep the little rascals from eating their way out and others from finding their way in. I plan on closing the hole with some cement to permanently close up the gap. Welcome to the further adventures of the Average Man or is it Homer Simpson incognito.