Bee Swarm

Last weekend, I was walking past the west side of our house with Ella, when I heard a curious sound...which I will illustrate with a quote from Winnie the Pooh:

"Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws and began to think. First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing-noise means something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee." From Pooh's Bedtime Book by A.A. Milne.

And when I adjusted my gaze upwards, I saw a whole pile of bees clumped on the rafter of the house. Two clumps, actually.

When one is not prepared to have bees of their own, as we are not at the moment, a person in my shoes needs to call Ben, who is very enthusiastic about his bee project right now. He said he'd come over shortly and try to catch the swarm, because he wanted to replace a hive that died over the winter. But by the time he got here, the swarm clump had shrunk, suggesting that they had already chosen our house as their post-swarm location. Which is what we confirmed. They had moved into a chance cavity at the edge of our roof. Darn.

So now we're not sure what to do. We're going to try to vacuum them out with a shop-vac. Short of that, we may need to close them up and allow them to die, as we can't have bees living in the roof. Just our latest homestead adventure...