Goodbye, Good Luck, and Godspeed

Springtime - renewal, replenishment, and neighborhood turnover. Recently, our next door neighbors sold their house. A few weeks later, their next-door neighbors, not us, sold their house. Now, we have a few vacant homes on the street.

Swarming over our roof

Imagine our surprise when the new neighbors literally showed up in swarms. The Bee family relocated to our home and started construction of their hive in our walls. We were a bit stumped figuring out why they chose our home. Sure, the food is good. We live on a quiet street. There's plenty of space since some of the kids moved out. And perhaps the most relevant, my wife's name can be translated to a swarm of bees. I'm not one to play the blame game, but...

A few days ago, we noticed a dozen or so honeybees inside our home. We racked our minds trying to figure out how they got in our home. We had multiple theories:

• We left a door open without closing the screen
• My wife's birthday flowers arrived with some passengers
• Our new indoor succulent garden attracted bees
• We recently sold a car to beekeepers and their bees stalked our scent 

Bee's entering and exiting our home

Our local beekeeper's guild lists members who help extricate the bees from homes. The day after the swarm, Bryan, a master beekeeper with ItsAllofYourBeesWax.com took care of us. He was able to get most of the bees out of the wall and then placed a mesh screen over the gap in the wall to prevent more bees from entering. 

We decided to let the bees find a new home on their own and wished them good luck, good-bye, and Godspeed.

Bryan encouraging the bees from our home to move out

Perhaps the original destination sought by the bees