The Secret Life of Bees

They say that bees can smell fear. I think this must be true, because there isn't much more in this world that scares Bill than bees (thanks to a childhood allergy that almost killed him) and our house has become a favorite place for bees to make their homes. If you walk along the perimeter of our house and look at our eaves, you will find a plethora of little honeycomb-shaped hives, with wasps, yellow jackets, and all varieties of bees swarming around. We buy bee killer spray in bulk.

Several weeks ago Bill was mowing the lawn and as he passed our irrigation pump box, out came an army of bees, going crazy. (He may or may not have run away screaming like a little girl.) We knew there had to be a good sized honeycomb hive in there, but we were not about to open it until those suckers were dead. Bill sprayed bee killer in the hole, then taped the hole up. (Imagine him rubbing his hands together and laughing, "Mwaaaaaa haaaaaa haaaaaa.")


Flash forward to Saturday. We had noticed that no bees had come out for a week or more. We decided it was safe to open it up. I was expecting maybe a fist-sized honeycomb hive (I don't really know if that's what they're called, but whatever), maybe a little bigger.

What we saw, instead, made our jaws drop.

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It was an...actual....BEEHIVE!!
Like, the basketball-sized ones you see in movies!!
Unfortunately, they had attached it to both the lid and the valve below, so when Bill opened the lid, it broke apart.

It was seriously one of THE COOLEST things I have ever seen in my life. I took a million pictures and we just couldn't stop staring at it, touching it, studying it. You can see how the actual hives are inside, stacked together, and the outer ball part is this feather-light, papery substance that protects it.

I had Bill hold it together so we could see what it looked like before it broke.



Look at the size of that sucker!! You should have seen how many dead bees were trapped inside it, and covering the floor of the irrigation box.

A bee apartment complex. How cool is that?
So cool that we can't bring ourselves to throw it away.
It's still sitting in our garage.
Anyone's kid need a good show and tell?