So, Frank, an interesting acquaintance who does masonry work, has convinced us that he needs work and he'll fix our rotting chimney for a good price - but, we hire him right now! So, we did. He was aware of the bees and thought that the cold weather would work to our advantage. He was even willing to try and save the bees and help us get them in a box. Once he got here and started putting up the scaffolding I realized that this wizened man was actually quite worried about the bee situation. This made me nervous so I spent several hours at GloryBee. GloryBEe is an amazing place - top seller of beekeeping equipment in the country and their only retail location is here in Eugene. They were super helpful, but also candid - bees in a chimney is a crap shoot - no telling what is going to happen. This was obvious since I had contacted two bee-knowledgeable folks to come help us. They both were super nice but refused to answer my calls for help after seeing the chimney AND the amount of bees coming out of it.
On Tuesday the scaffolding was ready. Since Steve is allergic to bees I asked our friend Mike to come help as a backup. The guys got up and started to prod the comb with a hoe. They started taking pieces out and hootin and hollerin. The bees were gone! And they ended up pulling two 5-gallon buckets of honey and comb out of the chimney. Mike took the buckets home, heated it, strained it, and brought me a huge jar of the tastiest honey later that day.
I will have to add photos of Frank later, but here are some from the last few days. One is a before shot of the chimney, one is a look down at the honeycomb, another is a piece of honeycomb dripping with honey, and then one of the brood comb (which is about 2 1/2 feet long).
