Real bees. They seem to be building a hive in
the wall of our house, and a few have gotten inside.

On the one hand, this is encouraging. I haven’t seen any bees around in
ages; there was a big die-off all across the country a few years ago, and
all we’ve seen since then are wasps, whose nest building attempts we’ve
had to fend off several times. This time it’s real, genuine honey bees.
It’s nice to see them making a comeback.

On the other hand, this is nostalgic. When I was a kid growing up in
this same house we had a bee problem every summer in the upper reaches of our
house. They weren’t living in the house as such, but every day one or
two or three would get into my room or my brothers’ room and would have
to be dealt with.

And then they did move into the house and built a hive in the wall of my
room. Instead of two or three bees a day, I’d have ten or twenty, a few
buzzing about, but most dead or dying. I took to keeping the vacuum
cleaner in my room–it was the easiest way to get rid of them.
Meanwhile, the wall of my room began to sound like rain on a tin roof.

Things came to a head the day I found at least a hundred dead bees on and
about my bed; my parents finally found an exterminator willing to tackle
the job, and the hive was killed.

So on the third hand, this is really kind of sad. If the bees
build a hive in a tree, you can get a beekeeper to come get them,
especially these days. But when they are in the wall of your house,
and there’s no way to get at the hive, there’s no choice but to call
the exterminator. It’s a shame, but there it is.