I was complaining to Bill on Friday that I hadn't collected the mail as there were too many bees hanging around the letterbox, I had gotten it Thursday and there had also been lots of bees hanging around then. He decided he would get the mail but came back complaining that I should have warned him about all the bees- it turns out overnight we had a small swarm of bees take up residence in our mail box- no wonder the postie did not deliver on Friday!
We rang up a bee keeper and he came around Saturday afternoon to collect the bees- it was rather tricky being in the letter box. He had his bee suit there but didn't bother using it or using gloves, he said the bees were pretty passive as they were full of honey. He just put his hand straight in the letter box, used a scrapper to put them into a takeaway container and then put them into the hive. He put a whole lot in the hive and then we just had to sit and watch for a bit, he thought he had gotten the queen bee in the hive, but turns out she probably wasn't as they started flying back out and back in the letterbox. He finally got her in the hive box and then they all stayed put. He left the hive there till about 8pm and came back and got it and took away the bees! We had a fascinating afternoon watching our letterbox and learning all about bees and honey. He was saying last year he probably only got 2 call outs for bees, this year he has had about 30! We gave him a couple of dozen eggs for his trouble, and our bees- he was most grateful, so is going to ring me when he starts extracting honey this year and we can go around and watch that and get some honey!
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