Bee-tastrophe

At the end of last week, Jeff noticed some bees flying around one of the pillars on our house.

It looked like they were scouting out a place to live.

Within a day, they had moved in, despite our efforts to convince them otherwise by spraying them with the hose.

Griffin (and Jeff) were the most concerned (and scared) but the bees left us alone, for the most part.

However, a beehive on the corner of a house is not... nor will ever be... a trendy, desirable decor element. So the bees needed to go before they got too comfortable.

We asked our knowledgeable exterminator friend to come over and take care of things yesterday.

He told us to use the side gate and garage as much as possible for the rest of the day because they'd be flying around mad and confused.

The below picture was taken of just the corner where their "new home" was to be, but the bees were flying around like this ALL OVER the front of our house.

They were EVERYWHERE!!

I took another picture when bigger numbers started to emerge...

.....Not knowing that a few hours later, I'd get some photos like this:

The weirdest thing was this patch of bees we found 30 feet away from the rest of the group on the house.

My guess is these were the protectors who's job was to make sure nothing happened to the family. They had failed and therefore were exiled to die alone...together.

Either that or they tried to transport the queen bee and only made it this far, sacrificing themselves to give her a proper burial.

It gives me the creeps thinking about digging through a pile of dead insects, so we may never know the answer.