Bye bye bee bee, bye bye!

Recently our wonderful, garage dwelling, feral bees ran out of space and a drone cut a hole through the interior wall into the garage.  Bees not being the brightest, they then congregated around the rear window to the garage hoping that somehow the glass would disappear and they'd be able to go on their merry way. 

With nothing to do but wait for a mating flight, one drone decided to create a new exit and gets berated by a female worker for leaving the back door open

Unfortunately, we didn't enter the garage for a couple of days and it was cool and wet overnight.  As the bees only knew of their main entrance to the nest, they couldn't work out what to do and few hundred of them died from exposure over night before we realised what had happened.

We covered up the hole they'd made with copper slugga tape as it was all we had to hand, then covered the window with a tarp and opened the door so the surviving bees could make their way out.  Which they did, slooooowly, over the day.  My DH then had the sad task of sweeping up the deceased.

Just to show that they're not fast learners, a couple of days later the exact same thing happened and again we lost a few hundred bees.

Fortunately, I know David the bee man! :)