Un-bee-lievable

This weekend we came up for a Sunday/Monday trip. Oceana’s getting back to her normal schedule of working Saturdays and being off Mondays. Since I’m now self employed again, I am able to have the flexibility with my schedule to do the same. It’s great! And this weekend was a big weekend. It was time to get the bees out of the wall in the shop. If you’re melissophobic, or have a fear of bees, you may not want to watch the videos in this post.

No Lumber Hauling

Saturday we both worked all day (back home) and then the weather turned to on/off rain. I was planning to haul up more lumber this weekend but the next load will be longer lumber that will be hanging out of the back of the van. I’d prefer it not to get rained on. That meant not hauling it this weekend. That’s ok. There will be more trips up.

Drywall Sanding

Sunday morning we got up bright and early and got right into sanding the drywall. Sounds like fun, right? Oh it was! Shirtless and in flip flops. It’s hot out! The festool sander was great again. After a good sanding, I got out the inspection light and circled all of the areas that needed a light skim coat. I mixed up some thin mud and then skim coated the room. The good news is that the thin skim coat dries quickly so I can final sand and be ready for trim. But that will have to wait. It’s bee time.

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It’s Bee-Thirty

What I learned a few weekends ago was that it’s better to remove the bees during the day as all of the forager bees are out and about and there’s many less bees to get agitated with you. At night, all of the foragers are there and they’re kind of protective of their home. Made sense to me so I followed that advice. I cleared out the work area and removed a set of shelves that was on the wall in front of the hive. After setting up a work bench, it was go time.

Well done, Oceana

I’d like to take a minute and give a shout out to Oceana. She filmed all of the videos that you’re about to watch. And we only have one bee suit. And I was wearing it. So think about that as you see these videos.

The game plan

Ok. So the gist of what’s happening is there’s bees living in the wall of the shop. We want them to live in a bee box where they can be happy and we can harvest the honey. To do this, we have to remove their comb and queen from the wall cavity and place them in frames within the bee box. Since the frames are smaller than the huge sections of comb in the wall, we’ll have to cut them to fit within the frames. This preserves as many of the brood larvae and honey as possible while fitting in a neat box. The cut sections are held in place with rubber bands for the time being until the bees affix them to the frame sides.

To get started, I removed a big chunk of drywall so that I could access the bees. That’s when I saw how big this colony was. The comb was over 3′ tall and was 3 layers deep. It wound up taking 15 frames to fit it all in. As I cut out each section, I inspected it in the light for the queen. Now, I am not an experienced beekeeper. I don’t have a lot of experience in spotting queens. I may have looked right at her but in this game of where’s Waldo, I never saw her. There were a lot of egg cells and since they were dark brown, that means that eggs have been hatched out of the same cells multiple times. That’s a sign of an active queen. Here’s a few videos of the process.

One thing that may surprise you is that the bees were calm during this whole process. The worker bees just want to work – whether it’s inside of a wall cavity or hanging on a frame in a bee box. They know what needs to be done and they do it. I guess that’s kind of like us and this house. But I digress. We placed the bee boxes right next to their old entrance into the wall. The rule of thumb is that you move the hive less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles. Never in between as it confuses the bees. In this case, we’re leaving the box right next to the opening so the colony can stabilize and then we’ll take them to our Loxahatchee house to live.

Back to Drywall

It was really hot out today. And this bee suit was crazy hot as well. It was just over an hour and a half of intense focus in getting the bees out. My butt was kicked. I sat down on the front porch and chugged a few ice waters. Ok, time to sand the drywall. I took the inspection light back and used a smaller hand sander hooked up to the dust extractor and hit all of the areas that I had skim coated. Good. Ready for primer and for trim.

Doors first

For the trim, the first step is getting the doors in. All of the baseboards stop at the door casing so step one is to get the doors in, then the door casing on, then the baseboards ran. It was time to play musical doors. I mentioned this in a previous post and today is the day. I’m going to take two doors from the hallway by the master bathroom as this hall/closet area will become the master shower and they won’t be needed. I cut one door free salvaging the entire frame and the casing on one side. I relocated and installed this in the closet door opening in the bedroom. Enough for one day. I was beat.

Monday morning I cut the second door free from the hallway and placed it in the door opening to the bathroom. Uh-oh. This was the opening that had a door in it previously, and it was about 2″ too tall. I completely forgot to check the height. Oh well. I added in a 2×4, put on a piece of drywall, and spread a heavy coat of mud over a layer of tape. With a light skim coat, this will be ready for paint next weekend.

Oceana’s plan for this weekend was curb appeal. She relocated all of the pavers that had been living on the front sidewalk to around back of the house. She then prepped and primed the concrete block foundation walls. It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes. It looks great. She also prepped and primed the two original windows on the front porch to either side of the door. These didn’t get painted when we painted the porch.

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Agitated Bees

Sunday night when all of the foraging bees returned, they seemed really agitated. They were swarming all around the bee box and were acting aggressive. Overnight they all went to sleep and were chill when I woke up Monday morning. However, as daylight approached, they started acting agitated again. After a while I decided to move the van, which was parked real close to the hive, and they seemed to calm down. I think the van was blocking their runway for takeoff and landing. After that you could see the foragers coming and going like normal but they were no longer swarming around the hive. I could also see evidence of where they were pushing debris out of the hive box so it looks like the worker bees are doing their job. Good.

Until next weekend. Stay safe out there. And PS: neither Oceana or I got stung this weekend! Amazing, right?!