The Bee Killers

Raw natural honey, right from our garden.

We have always had a bee problem. Well, actually we thought we had a wasp (tebuan) problem, but in reality they were actually bees. It became such a nuisance because the kids couldn't play in the garden freely, sometimes one lone bee would successfully fly into the house and Aiden would create a scene until we successfully get the bee out, and of course - the occasional bee stings. My poor maid was stung at least two times recently. Her hand ballooned up so bad, I felt really sorry for her.

Unfortunately, although we acknowledged the existence of bees in the garden, we simply could not find the beehive! We looked everywhere in the garden, but saw no inkling of a hive. We had so many bees in the garden that the bees had even taken to amass together at a spot just above our mighty pokok kari at night. It was their favourite spot to ‘sleep’ (but this was not their hive, mind you)! By mid-day, the bees would fly out in search of nectar.

Then one day, my maid called out to me and said that she saw a bee fly into the roof. The roof of her room to be exact, which is just beside the said pokok kari. We started observing the bees and spotted that there were bees flying in and out of the roof! Then it dawned upon us – the beehive was in the roof!!!

With the help of our neighbourhood security guard, we contacted Jabatan Pertahanan Awam who arrived promptly that night to help ‘evacuate’ the bees. They specifically came at night because apparently bees are blind at night (really??!!) which obviously eased their work.

Jabatan Pertahanan Awam at work.

So we barricaded ourselves in the house (except for Hubby who was outside watching the whole thing), turned off the lights and observed from behind the curtains. The JPA man climbed up the roof, dismantled the roof tiles and found a huge hive inside! First they brought down the roof tiles and used mosquito spray and fire to burn any bees stuck at the tiles. Then they took out the hive, piece by piece and placed it into a plastic bag - live bees and Queen Bee included. The hive was so huge that they filled the plastic bag hitam to the top!

Hubby, being the adventurous one that he is, requested to bring a piece of the beehive inside for the folks in the house to see. Honestly, I have never ever seen a real beehive before. My encounters with honey are usually with the store-bought ones. *grin*

A piece of fresh beehive. The honeycomb was oozing with honey!

Since Aiden, my step sister (who visited us that night) and I were so excited with the honeycomb, Hubby went outside to ask for more. In the end we got a plate full of honeycomb- unfortunately they were the semi charred ones as everything else had been packed in the plastic bag.

Honeycomb - dead bees included.

And all this honey was produced from the nectar of the flowers in our garden!

Have you ever seen a close up of a beehive internal structure? Check out the picture. You can see how the beehive structure is made out of densely packed group of hexagonal cells made of beeswax, which is called a honeycomb!

Beautiful! Cantiknya ciptaan Allah! 

Armed with his plate full of honeycomb, Hubby embarked on his next mission; to collect fresh honey! All he needed was a glass jar, a strainer and his own fingers. And boy oh boy, we were sooooo amazed at how much honey we could get from just a small piece of honeycomb.

Honey dripping off a small piece of honeycomb.

Squeezing honey out of the honeycomb.

Fingers included to give you a feel on the size of the honeycomb pieces.

And with just a few pieces of honeycomb, Hubby managed to collect two full jars of raw natural honey. Have you ever tried natural honey? You know, the one that cost a bomb when sold at supermarkets? Heck, even with those you cannot really verify its authenticity. But our honey, is definitely pure. And when I tasted it, I discovered that raw honey taste surprisingly... not sweet! Well it is slightly sweet and very light, but not at all overpowering nor super sweet like those store bought honey that I eat with my pancakes.

Our two jars of honey. I wonder how much honey the JPA folks managed to squeeze out from that one plastic bag full of honeycomb! I'm sure they can make a lot of money if they sell that.

What made the night even more sweeter than honey? My blog hit 400k viewers that night! Thanks to you, my loyal readers! *blows kisses*

The next morning, I walked out to examine the damage to our lawn. There were a few lost and confused bees flying around in search of their queen and their beehive. Then I saw a huge black patch where the JPA men were torching the roof tiles.

The black patch.

And upon closer examination, this was what the black patch was....

Dead bees. Yes, we are officially bee killers. I am soooooo sorry bees!!!! Next time come in peace and we can be friends okay?