A colony of Russian honeybees found a nice home in a space behind our chimney. I called a beekeeper who helped me move the bees out of the wall and into their new home in an apple orchard.

On the first day, we needed to discover where the bees were, so we drilled a few holes in the ancient horsehair plaster walls. This was Cyril's bedroom. Horsehair plaster is sealed. Crack that seal and it's like pouring sand and flour onto your floor. So we drilled a few spots to find the bees.

We found the bees, we drilled right into the middle of their nest. Little fuckers poured forth like an angry bee fountain. We quickly sealed the hole with a paper towel (bees are pansies, even weaker than chickens) for a few weeks until the beekeeper could come back to do the actual work. 

6 a.m. on my birthday, here's the beekeeper. We cut holes in the walls, peeling back the plaster and breaking the lath. I vaccuumed the bees into a filter box while he cut the combs and mounted them between wires in their nest box. When we were done, he opened a sliding door and the bees migrated to their new home. 

Except for the queen. She stubbornly stayed behind causing a small crowd of groupies to hang outside and try beating their way back in. She eventually escaped during reconstruction.