Adventures in Beekeeping?

All my plans for house projects were shot this weekend.  I knew Saturday was out the window because I had plans with a friend.  But, Thursday night when I got home from work, I discovered I had bees.  In. my. garage.  Ew, ick!  Ok, I understand that sometimes this happens - but on the outside.  They were coming in from outside through a vent.  Sigh....so, I made a trip to Home Depot Thursday night and got some spray.  Next night, I come home from work and there are more!  Crap!  My step-dad came over to assess the situation and we saw where they were all going - they were crawling up into a space just above some cabinets in my garage.  So, he sprayed the heck out of them.  Ran out of spray.  Ugh.   Off to Home Depot, again (this time I made sure to buy 2 more cans).  He said he would come back on Sunday to see if that worked.  So, after he left, I got to thinking - those cabinets in my garage have no backing on them.  They are just exposed to the studs.  Crap - that means dead bees would probably be inside the cabinet.  Gross - totally not looking forward to the clean up.  On Saturday, there seemed to be way less bees inside, but then I discovered this outside.

See that dark spot close to the roof line?  Yeah - that's bees.

I spared you the more close-up picture.  ICK!

That is some nastiness!  But, I was hoping that this was a good sign.  If they are gathering outside, then that must mean, they don't want to go inside (please, please, please), right?  So, today, my step-dad came over and reassessed the situation.  No more bees inside!  Yippee!  There were a few that came inside from the vent and went right to where we guessed the hive was and then they just flew away.   (We couldn't see the actual hive - it was hidden behind part of the cabinet).  So, that left me to do the dirty work - clean up.   I vacuumed up all the dead bees.  They were all over the floor and the inside of the cabinets.  Ew!  I made sure to clean inside the cabinets really good too.   "They" say that you should get rid of the hive also, but we didn't have access, so it will just have to stay.  To ensure that they wouldn't come back, I used some extra screen that I had and used spray adhesive (I need to replace my staple gun) to glue the screen to cover the vent so they can't get in anymore, but still allow airflow.  There were still some left on the outside wall, so we gave them a good spray.  I'm sooooo glad that they are gone and I don't have to worry about them being inside the garage anymore and can move on with my life!  (I couldn't even get to some of my tools since they were in that cabinet).

So, I didn't get much done as it took me awhile to clean up today (and oh-my-goodness, was it hot in the garage!  I was dripping sweat!).    I did fix the crappy spackle job that I did when I installed the curtain rod brackets in the kitchen as seen here.

Seriously, I know how to spackle.  I don't know why I did it so crappy that night.  Probably out of frustration.  Anyhow, I just scraped off the excess spackle.  I did have to take down these brackets though and I'm spackling up the holes again.  The curtain rods that I bought at Walmart (they were the shortest ones I could find anywhere) were being difficult when I tried to cut them shorter.  They left rough edges and I think that the fabric will get caught on it whenever I want to open up the curtains.  I ended up finding curtain rods that were the correct size at Bed, Bath & Beyond - score!  So, I got those and will need to install those now.  Unfortunately, the hole placement is different with the new set, so I have to start fresh again.

I decided to give up on projects for the rest of the weekend since the whole bee situation just wore me out.  I'll just enjoy the rest of my night!