BEES!!

Being in the middle of spring, I've noticed lately that there have been more bees in my backyard.  I've welcomed them because they pollinate all the vegetables in my garden.  This morning I was pruning some of my plants and I noticed a white chunk of something sitting on a branch of a tree in my backyard.  Funny, I thought, looks a bit like beeswax.

Later in the afternoon, I noticed a few white chunks on the floor beneath the tree:  I looked closer to investigate and saw a couple of bees on them, and sure enough it was beeswax.

 

I wondered where these chunks of beeswax were coming from, and looked up into the tree and to my horror, I discovered this:

HOLY SHIT! I have no idea how long these bees have been here or building this hive.  It's about 2 ft long and at least a foot wide!!  Here are more gory pictures:

Clearly these are honey bees, and so far they've been pretty peaceful and have kept to themselves, but they still give me the heebie-jeebies in a massive way.    Even those these bees are scary looking, they are very beneficial to the environment, and we did not want all these bees to be killed-- that would be such a waste.  We have a bee specialist coming on Monday to remove the hive and he'll be relocating it to a bee farm.  It'll be really interesting to see how he gets up into this tree to remove the hive!! 

Until then, we'll just be extra careful not to disturb this hive or piss the bees off!