Mother's Day, Bees, and Ice Cubes

I know it's Tuesday, and I'm already two days late, but a belated Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.  A special Happy 1st Mother's Day to my adorable niece with the May 9th birth of her son.  What a special day this was for her.  Mother's Day is every day with my 3 great girls, I am so lucky!  How can you have a Mother's Day without honoring your children?  A great mother makes great children and visa versa---great kids make for a great mother!!  Oh yeah, and not forgetting to mention, I am the dogmother at my house to three cute dogs that adore me.

 Mr. B. and I had just starting working around the yellow brick house on Sunday;  he was outside painting when he came running inside to get me,
"Kim hurry, come outside and listen to this!!"
I ran outside and could instantly hear a very loud buzzing sound.  Mr. B. pointed towards the tall maple tree on the other side of our backyard deck, "Look those are bees!"

This mass of bees seemed to grow by the second!

I looked up and couldn't believe my eyes.  A large black cloud hovering over the deck was where the buzzing sound was coming from.  Within minutes, there was what appeared to be a honey hive hanging off the tree branch at the end of the deck.  Thousands and thousands of bees were working frantically around this hive thing that kept growing in size.  Luckily, Mr. B. had put the three dogs inside at the first sight of this strange black cloud.  I have heard about swarms of bees in the warmer states, but having it happen here in the cool part of the Midwest where the winters get below zero was an odd occurrence.    

  I don't know anything about bee behavior, just that they build for the queen bee, but I quickly decided we had to get these out of my backyard.  The bees were less than 20 feet from the back door.  That was just too close for comfort with a daughter that is allergic to bees and three playful dogs running around.  I decided I would call a beekeeper on Monday to come over and hopefully, take the bees away.  The noise eventually died down, and as nightfall came, the activity ceased.  I cautiously let the dogs outside Monday morning and then picked up the dog pooperscooper which made a loud clapping sound.  All of a sudden the loud buzzing noise started again, I looked up and saw thousands of bees flying everywhere!  I ushered the dogs back inside quickly and looked up at the tree branch.  Within minutes, the thing I thought was a hive, was quickly disappearing.  It had been made up of bees that were now rapidly flying away.  Just like that, they left as quickly as they had arrived at my house.  I am not sure if the pooperscooper scared them, or if their time was up and they decided to move on.  It was Mother's Day, maybe they had stopped here to honor the Queen Bee!!  I have never seen anything like it before, but I was glad they left  Monday morning.

Back inside the house, we got back to work, Mr. B. finished the installation on the built-in dishwasher then got the water line hooked up to the new refrigerator.  I now have cold water and ice at my disposal on the front of my new refrigerator.  I have never wanted a fridge with a water/ice dispenser on the outside, but we couldn't find one without this gadget when we shopped.  So here it is, I can even get crushed ice to make my favorite drinks!  And that's how my Mother's Day ended.