Thursday, February 23, 2012

The Bees: Part 2

In case you missed it,  The Bees: Part 1.

So there we were, enjoying our carefree Saturday. I was playing around on my computer in the office. My husband made a frozen pizza for lunch and called up to see if I wanted some. I came downstairs and we both sat on the couch and watched TV and ate some pizza. After lunch, I headed back up to the office.

As I walked upstairs and past the guest bedroom, I spotted a bee buzzing against the window. I immediately turned to get Hubby to rid our house of the bee. I do not do bees. As I turned, I saw another bee on the skylight above me. I took a step down the stairs and a third bee flew past me, heading toward the large, two story window in our living room. That's when I looked toward the window and saw them. The window was crawling with bees. Dozens of bees clinging to the window or trying to fly through it.

Needless to say, I kind of freaked out at this point. I called to my husband. While he was coming, I turned and looked up at the spot where we had heard the scratching noise behind the drywall. There was now a small hole in the ceiling and bees were steadily emerging from the hole and heading toward their comrades at the front window. A few of the bees would occasionally give up at the front window and fly past me toward other windows looking for an alternative exit.

My husband soon joined me in the living room and sprang into action. His research, it turns out, had paid off, as he had happen to come across information on what to do in the event that the bees ever get into your house. He grabbed the vacuum and headed up to the bedroom. He held the end of the wand right up to the hole and stopped the flow of additional bees into our house and instead directed them into the bottom of our vacuum cleaner.

I, on the other hand, was standing nearby, trying to avoid having anything to do with the bees and hoping he didn't fall out the bedroom "window" and break his neck. And then he tells me, "I need you to come hold the vacuum cleaner."

"What!!! Why?"

Well, either he could stand there all day and hold the vacuum cleaner to the hole, or he could go get a piece of tape and cover up the hole so that they couldn't get in.

Fine. That made sense. Yuck. And also, I hate bees, but OK.

I stood on a chair, took the vacuum and held it up to the perfect, little circle in my ceiling. Thump. Thump. Thump. I could feel every bee getting sucked into the hose. Gross. Thump. Thump. They kept coming. About one every 5 seconds or so. Occasionally, one of the bees from the front window would give up on trying to fly through the glass and head back toward the hole in the ceiling, back toward me. As soon as it would get within range of the vacuum, I lowered the wand and sucked the bee out of the air. Every time it happened, at least three bees had emerged from the hole by the time I got the wand back up there, so I had to suck them up, too. Man they were fast.

Hubby came back with some packing tape. I kept the vacuum near the hole while he precariously reached for the ceiling and sealed them in. Whew. No more bees getting into the house. Now we just had to deal with the scores of bees that were already in the house and still had to eliminate the hundreds of bees that were still in the ceiling...

Tomorrow, Part 3: The exciting conclusion.