It has been non-stop! The company we ordered our mattresses from (The Original Mattress Factory) in Fort Worth call Tuesday morning and asked if they could deliver today instead of the originally scheduled Wednesday. David’s customer called with an emergency task needed before the end of the week as well. The mattress delivery was supposed to have a couple of guys to manhandle the mattresses into the house. But when they showed up, there was only one guy in the truck, so David had to help him bring them in. In, addition to coordinating with the builder and their subcontractors to get things finished up. On Thursday we had the new couch delivered. But they also decided to put in the sod that day. And David was meeting a company (River Wind movers) up in Fort Worth to load up all our “stuff” from the storage unit and move it down to the house. They were also delivering a hutch and bed frame we had bought at Rivers Wind. Then to top it off, a swarm of 20,000-30,000 honey bees flew in, scattering the guys laying the sod and descending on the roof of the house! The swarm did not sting anyone, but it sure gave everyone a scare. Unfortunately, they found a hole (that David had asked the builder to plug back in August) into the eve and settled in. We called the builder and sent them pictures and all we got was “not our problem”. Then I pointed out that they still had to put the gutters up and those bees were not going to be very happy about that. We suggested they call a bee keeper to come sweep them up, but all we got was silence. On Friday we packed up the Wanderer and backed it into the shop since they were forecasting severe storms over the weekend. Storms rolled through Friday night and we did not even hear them tucked away in the shop. We started trying to unpack stuff from the storage unit and get it organized in the house. Leslie decided she did not like the arrangement of the furniture, so we arranged for the guys from Rivers Wind to come down and spend a half hour moving things around to a better arrangement. Then the real unpacking started as well as moving stuff out of the Wanderer and into the house. A week later the gutter installers showed on Friday morning with two cans of wasp spray thinking that would take care of the bees. They killed a bunch but they just kept on coming out. They finally decided that they needed a bee keeper. One of the guys knew one and the builder called him to come out. David met them outside and showed him the hive location and told them what the builder’s guy had done. He said he could not touch them as the pesticide would contaminate the hive and if he went in, it would contaminate his equipment. He said the hive would probably die out over the weekend from the residual pesticide at the entrance. But if there were still bees on Monday to give him a call. On Saturday, we attended a neighborhood crawfish boil. Sunday, we drove up with Samantha, Rick and Alan to the client appreciation event at our mutual financial advisor. The weekend was cool and rainy, so the bees were not very active. On Monday we had the bee keeper come back out and he brought equipment that he was not worried about getting contaminated. They cut open the eve to get to the hive and pulled out an amazing amout of comb for it only being 10 days. There were even larvae already. He was really surprised and said that was the fastest he had ever seen a hive grow like that. We watched through the window as they were swarmed by thousands of bees. They vacuumed up the bees into a bucket, pulled out the comb, then sealed the eve back up, sealed the original hole they had come in through, and painted it. You can’t even tell they were there. Hundreds of field bees that were out harvesting are still coming in but have no way to get in. Those will die off over the next couple of days. The ones he vacuumed up, hopefully including the queen, will be released out in a very rural area, miles from here. With any kind of luck, they will be able to establish a new hive somewhere else. But it cost us $425 to fix what should have been the builder’s problem after they failed to do what we had asked them to do months ago. At least this way the bees might be saved. Meantime, we continue to unpack.
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| Pantry |
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| Kitchen and Dining room |
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| Living Room |
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| Entrance Hall |
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| Study |
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| Kitchen |
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| Primary Bath |
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| Utility Room |
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| Bees entering the new hive |
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| Neighborhood Crawfish Boil |
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| Bee Comb |
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| Bee Comb |
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| Bee Comb |
