Ware bee!
(There bee!)
Ahem. So the maintenance guy at my apartment complex has been doing a round of heavy maintenance lately—tearing down big chunks of the second-floor balconies, ripping out rotted wood, and (presumably) shoring up the balconies with good wood.
This morning he was working on the balcony above my patio. (I have a first-floor apt.) When I left for work, he stopped me to tell me there had been too many beams.
"Beams?" I asked, and he pointed up in a corner, where two supporting beams met, and then picked something up off the ground, and I saw that he'd said "bees," because what he was holding was a dead bee.
He said there'd been lots of them, and that I should look in the back of his truck as I left. So I did.
The bed of the truck contained a curved mass, perhaps 18 inches across, made up of twisted and layered papery material; the sort of thing I would have associated with paper wasps, though I don't know that I've ever seen a real paper-wasp nest. This one had dozens of dead bees all over it.
Also in the truck were two pieces of honeycomb six inches across. There was no honey in them, but some of the cells were covered over in white stuff.
I got out my camera to take a couple of pictures (which I can't share with y'all easily because I'm still in the dark ages of film), and as I looked closer I saw motion in one of the combs. Some of the white-capped cells had broken open, and larvae were wriggling around, stretching out of the comb. They pushed my gross-bugs buttons, but it was still fascinating to watch, and a little sad. One remaining live bee crawled across the surface of the comb.
On the one hand, it was a fairly big hive/nest; I can see that it wouldn't coexist real well with human habitation, especially given that there are a fair number of kids in the complex.
On the other hand, the bees weren't doing me any harm; in fact, I hadn't noticed them at all. (But then, I don't ever see the kids who live in the complex either.) And bees are pretty cool as insects go; the stingers are really the main drawback.
So I'm a little sad to see them go. I pulled a little piece off the nest to remember them by.