Saturday, September 20, 2008

A beehive in my bathroom

This is the second day since my maid brought my attention to a beehive that has formed on my bathroom's ceiling board.

The hive is currently about the size of 2-3 adult fists. Refer to the picture on the left.

I've been happily oblivious to the nest's formation since I tend to use that bathroom only early in the morning and late in the evening. During those times, the beehive is exceedingly silent and inactive. All of the bees would be clumped together in a solid mass and none of them would be in flight.

These honey bees are the ones found at sugar cane drinks stalls and are quite harmless unless provoked. They will attack if the feel that their nest is threatened.

So far, over the last 2 days, I've been using the bathroom warily. Thankfully, the bees are not yet agitated by my routine toilet activities. With the nest just 2-3m directly over my head whenever I 'sit on my throne', I cannot help but think of the phrase 'sitting duck'.

Here's a 52 second video of that hive when it is active. The image is slight shaky as I was holding the camera to my telescope.



I suspect that this colony of bees were attracted by my flowering passion fruit vines in my garden. In fact, just several months ago, we reported another beehive that formed on a tree along the road, in front of our house, to National Parks Board. They promptly sent in the Pestbusters and got that nest removed.

There is a global shortage of bees is expected to lead to a crisis in crops production and higher food prices. Read about the bee's Colony Collapse Disorder here.

Since today is a Sunday, I'll wait till tomorrow to seek advice from National Parks Board again to see if there are any registered beekeepers in Singapore. A quick search on the Internet did not reveal any beekeepers in this country.

Apparently beekeepers would be very happy to remove the nest for the public. Their prized find is the rare Queen Bee, which is critical to sustain a captive colony in order to repeatedly harvest honey from them.

It'll be a terrible waste to kill off these bees should I call in the pest exterminators.

Anyone knows of a way or someone who can remove such nests without killing those bees?

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