(There bee!)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\"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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So I'm a little sad to see them go. I pulled a little piece off the nest to remember them by.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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