Be Still

This week I am taking a class for work at the University of Montana in Missoula.  It is a gorgeous campus, with walking trails and bountiful nature all around.  Adjacent to the building where the ecosystem restoration class being held is a raised bed garden with glorious wildflowers.

Being who I am, I immediately began scouting the flowers to see the bees.  And there were none visible.  I scanned from right to left, front to back, and was just amazed that in all of this gorgeous flora, with all of their delicious nectar, there was not one bee. 

So I started scanning flower types.  I know that lavender is a prime source of nectar, so I went to one patch, and then the next.  No bees.

Bees love purple flowers (they can't see red), so I focused in on the next set of flowers.  Still no bees.   

It made no sense.  I had even seen some hives as I was driving in to campus, so I know that they are present.  Further, the window of opportunity for bees in this area of the country is pretty small (I think that their winter begins next week).  So the bees should just be covering every flower, competing for the opportunity to pollinate and drink deeply from the gorgeous blooms.

Nothing.  

Perplexed, I just stopped and stared at the garden.  About four seconds later, I saw motion out of my peripheral vision.  I tracked the movement and smiled when I saw my first bee, as she lit on a white flower.

As I watched that beautiful little girl dipping flower after flower, I saw motion to my right.  To my left.  Above.  Below.  Right at my fingertips.  Everywhere, there was motion.

I was amazed.  Somehow, I had totally missed it.

This is not the first time I have had a hard time spotting bees.  Almost every single time that I am called out to someone's house to do a bee removal, I scout the entire property, looking up and down for the entrance with bees.... and I only manage to see them when they are pointed out.  Even swarms, where there is a huge amount of bee activity, poses an observation problem to me. I have a blind spot for a group of creatures that I love.

I am convinced that it is a matter of being still.

I am, at my core, a pretty lazy guy.  I would rather sit than stand, and I would rather stand than walk.  But even when being still, I am not still.  My mind is trying to take in all of the visual cues I receive, and I jump from one thing to the next, making connections and asking questions and flitting from one idea and observation to the next, sipping from each flower in turn.

As a result, I am seldom truly still.

But then when I am still and quiet, an entire world opens up to me.  I begin to see things that I missed.  Small actions that I had not noticed.  My peripheral vision pulls in information that my frenetic brain did not process.

Some 3000 years ago, the Psalmist wrote, Be still, and know that I am God. 

I suspect that, just as I do with the motion of the bees, that I miss God a lot.  In my action-packed, schedule-filled week of activities, I jump from one bit of work to another, and one bit of fun to the next.  And in all of that action and motion, I forget to take a moment, to take a breath, and truly be still.  To quiet my mind.  

This week, I will try and do better.  I will look and listen to those around me, to stop long enough to let my soul begin to sense what my eyes filter out.  This week, I will quiet my brain and actually work at being still.

To observe the motion around me, and be amazed.

Sweet, Sweet Success

Honeycomb, ready for crush and strain

Last week, I posted the results of the honeybee removal from the previous Saturday, and was pretty proud of how it had gone (you should read it, if you have not already).  In what was an extremely long day of work on a 24-foot ladder, Shannen and I:

• Opened the wall to expose the hive
• Removed eight combs of brood
• Removed 14 combs with honey
• Captured the queen (maybe - with the sticky mess, it was hard to tell)
• Vacuumed up the bees, and,
• Cleaned up

Pure honeycomb

 We split up the remaining tasks, with Shannen taking the job of dividing up the honey and comb, and me with the task of  installing the bees in the new hive.  Shannen did her job admirably: this weekend I received several large jars of honey and honeycomb from her part of the work.

In the interim, I took the bees over to Eddie Brooks' house, and inserted the queen and the comb and thousands of worker bees into a top bar hive over there.  From a few reports that followed in the next week, I heard that the bees were doing their thing, and in decent numbers.  But you just don't know until you open them up whether the queen is there, and doing her job.  You also do not want to bother her too much, too early.  But a week after installation seemed like a good time to check.

Worker bees hanging out at the Brooks' estate.

This morning, I called up and asked Eddie to take a look in on her - just to see if there were eggs and brood in the hive.  "Sure!  I'll do that this morning!"

About an hour later, I received a text.  

"Actually found the queen and watched her laying eggs."

Thumbs may never have been used to text sweeter words.

All along, it has been a source of concern for me that I was not successfully installing hives into new locations.  The removals were going well, but the installations were not successful.  Either the queen was hurt, or lost, or destroyed.  And eventually, the bees all left to join the circus.  Or a commune.  Or something. Whatever the cause, they did not stick around.

Without the installation success, what I am doing equals little more than extermination.  And that was bothering me.  It weighed on me quite heavily that I was not finishing the job.

But in this case, it went well from start to finish, and I have check marks by every goal I had.

Hive safely removed: check.
Honey removed: check.
Brood separated: check.
Queen recovered: check.
Queen installed safely: check.
Queen laying: check. (woohoo!)

Now the only thing that remains is for me to collect the: check.

I am so happy.  This is where I wanted to be.  Giving bees a chance.

First Stings

This week I did a hive inspection.  For the past few weeks, I haven't been able to locate my gloves, so I get stung a lot. I wear latex gloves, though, and they help.  I can still feel the work I am doing, which helps my dexterity, and if I get stung. I can just lift the stinger off (without depressing the poison sac injector at the end of the stinger), and I get less poison.

Most of the time, I do my inspections solo, simply because I like being with the bees. They are fascinating creatures, and as I observe more, I feel like I get to understand them better. (I suspect that the hummmm drowning out my tinnitus also is a factor.)

What I don't love is having someone else get stung. Whenever I have help, I have to keep an eye out for how they are faring.  I love showing, and I love teaching, and it is the coolest thing ever to see someone get enthused. But when they get stung, I worry that the love affair I have with bees is going to be ruined for the person helping.

Last week, my wife Kathe got stung.

She had been doing really well.  She went from someone who had an unreasonable fear of bees (well, maybe not so unreasonable) to someone infected with second-person honeybee-itis.  My enthusiasm is infectious, and I am like a five-year-old, rattling off all of these unimaginable facts about honeybees.... 

("did you know that drone bees come from the unfertilized egg? and did you know that the bees do a waggle dance that communicates direction and distance?  and did you know.....")

Kathe, looking cute in beek garb.

...and Kathe had gone from being afraid to wary to accepting to tolerant of bees, even before we actually had a hive at our house.  As she had watched me, she had grown even less afraid, and became my photographer.  Hive inspection selfies are notoriously difficult, and fraught with peril.  I need to be focusing on the girls, rather than making pouty lips for the camera. 

And Kathe seemed pretty happy, taking pictures.  She dared - even without the bonnet -  to get closer and closer, getting the picture, and getting some really good ones, too.  Afterwards, looking at her pics, I was able to confirm some of my impressions of what was going on in the hive.

And then came last week.  

She was doing her move-in-get-the-shot-move-out dance, and was getting good shots.  And in the middle of one of the hive inspections, I dropped the frame I was holding.  Not a massive splat, just a small jolt to everyone on the frame.  

Dropping the frame is not the end of the world.  There is a danger that some of the girls get crushed, and an extreme outside chance that the queen might get hurt.  But mostly it just gets everyone excited.  You combat that with a little more smoke, and keep working. 

But the girls did not calm down much.  And when Kathe came in for her next picture, they charged her.

She stepped back calmly.  That had always worked before.  They matched her, stride for stride.  She backed away more, giving them all the space they needed. They matched her, stride for stride, bumping her head over and over.

And then she broke, and started running. (And maybe flailing, just a little bit).

I told her STOP, and she did, while covering her face with her hands (good instinctive move).  I walked over to her, and the bees started bumping me, instead.  I was in full suit, so I ignored their attentions.  

"I think I just got stung," she said.  "Maybe twice."

I looked over at her, and sure enough, there was one stinger hanging from her forehead.  I told her, "Go inside.  I'll meet you and get the stinger out. But don't touch it." The stinger sac, when depressed, pushes more poison into the skin.  And it hurts like billy-oh.

As I took my gear off, one of the girls that followed us decided to X herself on my ear.  

Once I had tweezer-removed the stinger from Kathe's forehead, I removed the stinger from my ear, and went back out to my now-becalmed hive.  Sans photographer.  Oddly enough, her approach worked wonders: the combination of stinger removal, alcohol application, and benadryl ingestion resulted in a very minor reaction.  Essentially, Kathe looked as though she had a mosquito bite on her forerhead, and nothing on the jaw where she had also been stung.

So much for the epi-pen I keep at the ready.

Kathe is not the only person to have been stung while I worked the bees.

Shannen, a newbie beek like me, presented a more serious issue.  A couple of years ago, she had an allergic reaction to a wasp sting (wasps are different), and landed in the hospital.  So when she started keeping bees this year, she was understandably concerned about how she would react to getting stung.  She was VERY careful, and was extremely conscientious of being completely covered up when working her girls.  

And two months in, had still not been stung. As she said to me, "I was pretty much at the point of trapping one in a glass and then shaking her, then applying her to the back of my hand just so I could get stung and get it over with."  

Instead, while working bees with me, she got stung.

I did not realize she was sensitive, so I was unconcerned.  But she was watching it all very closely, and explained that concern might be the appropriate response. Eventually, she had some reaction, but was not anaphylaxis, so we both relaxed about it a little.

And then she helped me with a hive removal this weekend.  And in the process of transferring bees from one container to another, she got hit again.  Several times, all through the glove, with limited effect.

Once she had walked away, she took off her hood, and got popped again, right behind the ear.

Shannen, taking a peek, 24' above the ground.

That one, we both paid attention to.

Eventually, the combination of tobacco poultice, alcohol rub, benadryl consumption, and ice pack worked its majick.  And she did not need a trip to the hospital nor a shot with an epi pen (I keep one with me on the job, in case someone has need.)  And then we just kept working.

Having people around me get stung is always a concern for me; I fear that people might be stung because I am working with the bees.  One of my removal jobs has resulted in three people getting stung, and it horrifies me whenever it happens.  But it does happen, even as reluctant as my girls are to commit to the sting.  They would much rather buzz you away, and not have to sting you.

Kathe is determined to come back and work with me again.  But from now on, she is going back as a wary participant.  

And she definitely coming in with her gear on.  Safety first.

Don't Look - Long Way Down

I extended my 20' ladder to its full length, and placed it against the front wall of Mr. Stephen Edmonson's house.  I clambered up, I stood on the top available rung, and still fell about four feet short of being able to peer into the hive.

This beehive removal was going to be tricky.

Stephen has a lovely house over in Ridgeland, about a 45 minute drive from my house, and he has bees that have infested the corner of the house. As he explained it,

Last year, we had a huge swarm of bees out in the tree right there in the front yard last year, and they just stayed there for a long time - it was just amazing.  Eventually, they moved into that spot right there. Then a couple of months ago, the AC guy got stung a couple of times in my attic, and there are a lot of dead bees up there.  So I contacted another beekeeper, who just got too busy.... and then I called you.

From the top of the ladder, I was at a better vantage point, but it was also very clear that my ladder was not going to cut it.  It was also clear that there was NOTHING to hang onto. But the bees were industriously running in and out of the hive, bringing in their groceries and doing their bit to pollinate the world.

I came back and told Stephen, "I will need to get a better ladder, but I can do it.  I will need somebody to help with this one, just because it is high, though.  But we should be able to get it out of there with little problem.  I'll send you an estimate, and we'll schedule the work."

Armed with a sturdy rental ladder from Home Depot, I returned this past Saturday to take on the job, with a friend and beekeeper Shannen Blackledge.  Even with the taller ladder, though, the drop from the top was formidable.  My auditorium job (blog post still pending) was probably higher, but at least there were some branches to hang onto while I worked. Not so here...

Every removal job I have done has been an exercise in problem solving.  How do I get to the bees, how do I open the hole enough to get them out; how do I remove them safely (both safety for me and safety for them) and how do I keep them from returning?

Finally started, I removed the molding on the face of the hive, and pried up the roofing just enough to see the extent of the comb.  And it was beautiful.  Layer after layer of beautiful, amber-colored comb. And curious bees looking back at me, without aggression or anger, just checking me out, then going back to clean up the mess I had already started to make.

That mess was about to get a whole lot worse.

Peeking inside.

I removed the shingles from the overhang (overbalancing once for a frightening moment).  And then tried to pry loose the waferboard (OSB) underneath.  The OSB extended under and through, and was tied into place from multiple directions.  After a half hour of trying to untie the Gordian knot, I got out the Sawzall, and cut through the OSB that capped the area. The comb was attached to the waferboard; removing it broke the very top of the comb off, and the delicious smell of honey permeated everything.  And the honey started to drip.

Honeycomb attached to waferboard

It dripped onto the ladder.  It dripped onto the light fixture.  I dripped onto the tarp (placed on the patio in an odd moment of foresight on my part) and onto me.  I invited Shannen to take a look from my perch on top of the ladder.  After a brief glance, her nice, clean suit was no longer either.

Then I started removing comb.  The first piece is almost always the toughest, as you have to try and remove the comb from the top, bottom, and sides, all without destroying the comb or spilling a drop of honey or pinching a bee or overbalancing.

...revealed more beneath.

This time, I successfully used a combination of bbq tongs and a long, thin jabsaw that let me cut the pieces free by sliding between the pieces of comb. What surprised me was how far back I could feel the comb.  The open space between combs extended more than 3 feet back... well beyond where I should have encountered the brick of the wall.  Oh, man, I thought.  This is going to be a MUCH bigger job than I thought.

A few more pieces of comb removed, and it was clear what had happened.  Instead of brick, there was foil-backed styrofoam board, covering an opening in the wall.  The bees had chewed through the styrofoam, and the ladies had built two combs and filled one with honey.

This was how the girls were getting into the attic. This was how the AC guy got stung.

Meanwhile, I am frantically looking for the queen.  My previous removals have not resulted in complete success, because I did not find the queen, and separate her out.  In one removal, she escaped and hid, only to return to the scene and instruct her followers to build more comb.  In another, I feel sure she got smushed by the vacuum (I have since lowered the amount of suction I use).  None has resulted in a queen that is viable.

So this time, I am on the lookout.  I extract a bee with an enormous abdomen, and am thrilled.  I have found the queen! Then I find another.  And another.

Apparently, this whole race of bees has huge distended abdomens.  And because they are coated in honey, it is hard to tell.  (Eventually, I captured her.  I think).

Finally, after dozens of trips up and down the ladder, each time carrying more brood and honey and comb down from the perch, and each time smearing more honey onto each rung of the ladder, I had hit the end of what I could reach.

There were still eight pieces of comb that needed to be removed.  And I had no real way to get to them.  The remainder were bracketed by multiple 2x4s, and closed in - completely inaccessible.  I reached in to cut the next one free, but every time I would reach to retrieve it, I would only manage to push it further away.

By this time, I had worked the site from 9:30 to mid afternoon, and I was getting tired and a little more accident prone.  I had managed to stave off a couple of slips (note to self: buy shoes with better traction) and a sickening slide of the ladder against the now-slick brick of the building (note to self: buy a ladder stabilizer) and a scary moment with the Sawzall (note to self:....um.)

Honeycomb's big, yeah, yeah, yeah...

I worked out the only solution I could come up with.  One more board was removed from the front - a small section of 2x4 that ran along the face of the opening.  Once I removed that piece, I had access to the remainder of the comb, which was very fresh, bright, new comb with pure honey inside.

All of the family - Stephen, his wife, and his four beautiful kids - all got in on the action at different points in the day.  For them, and for the passersby that stopped to ask us questions, we carved out and shared honey.

Then took the rest back with us.  (Where it now sits, in mason jars, ready for consumption....).  And finally, the removal of the comb was complete.

All (all!) that remained at this point was removal of the bees, cleaning the empty space, and relocating the bees to a new home.

It had already been a long day at this point, and it was not getting any shorter.  Shannen put another bottle of water in my hand - she had been carefully monitoring me for dehydration all day long, and fed me bottle after bottle of water.  A true life saver.

I attached my beevac to the shorter ladder and climbed up three more times to remove as many bees as I could reach.  Many would come back from the field later that evening and next day, but I managed to fill three buckets with bees, each getting set aside for placement once we got the comb moved to a new location.

I doused the entire opening with ammonia, which got the bees excited, but did not induce them to leave.  Finally, once the majority of the sticky mess had been turned into an ammonia-y mess, And most of the bees were gone, I added the poison to keep them from coming back and reoccupying the DMZ.


The final step was to get the bees installed in a new home.  I considered all my options.  The ones I favored all involved 3Bs - beer, benadryl, and bed, and leaving the bees for the next day.  But to give them the best chance at survival, I needed to get them into a new home as soon as possible.

I finally decided that I would drop them into a top-bar hive on Eddie Brook's property.  Two different removals have ended up on Eddie's doorstep, and one of the hives had completely absconded, so there was space.

I cut comb, wrapped rubber bands around the comb, and strapped the pieces on a top bar, fitting them into the box.  Then I suited up, and dumped all three buckets of bees into their new home, wishing them luck and leaving them behind. So that I could head to a place where three different Bs awaited my attention.

Reports from the field:

From Mr. Edmonson, following the removal:  On Sunday there was a huge swarm of them all around our house. Hundreds where you removed the hive. We almost couldn't go outside, they were attacking us in the front and back yard. We left after lunch on Sunday and just got back this afternoon. I looked up at the hive area, and I could see no more than 3 bees buzzing around and a lot of dead ones on the ground. So you must have gotten the queen.

And from Eddie Brooks:  There are LOTS of bees buzzing and happy around the new hive.  They look good.

Some Lessons Learned:

• Ladder stabilizers are a must for high jobs.
• Bring the top bar hive with you so you can tie off comb as you remove it.
• More tupperware will always be needed.
• Benadryl tablets might not be a bad thing to bring along. 
• Hornet spray splatters back on you (and burns!) at close range.
• Granola bars are a requirement.  A full meal in the middle of the day would be bad, but hunger at the end of the day is bad, too.

End result, I think this will be a success.  The bees are now no longer in the house, and a carpenter can come and do the repair work without fear of being stung.  And the bees have a new home that they can live in, with attention and care being paid to their well being.

Can't wait to see them building more comb.

The Miraculous Fount of Sister So-and-So

The bees covered the floor of the classroom, all dead.  Layered on the floor in front of the 12' window, their carcasses were dried and dusty.  Every horizontal surface within twenty feet was covered with the bodies. One sad, exhausted - but still alive - bee beat her wings against the window, trying in a vain attempt to escape to the outside where nectar and pollen awaited.

The location was the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation, housed in a beautiful building from the 19th century.  The problem was not the dead bees in the classroom.

The problem was the honey dripping down the walls of the auditorium.

Last Thursday evening I saw a Facebook message on the Central Mississippi Beekeepers Association page.  It read:

A follow up message came a few minutes later.

Subject: Bees at the Southern Cultural Heritage Complex-- Vicksburg, MS
The bees are in the attic and honey is leaking though the ceiling! This is the Catholic Complex -- Was St. Francis of Xavier Convent and School before being bought by Southern Cultural. They plan to exterminate the hive if they cannot find someone to get it out. My son works there -- call 769-798-3216 and ask for Isaac. There is an event in the building this Saturday so they have to do something one way or the other by then. Thanks, FH

That location is three blocks from my work.  The people are all friends I have worked with before.  It was the perfect job for me to go and take a look.

When I got there, the task was much more daunting than I had thought.  I knew beforehand that the ceilings were high.  But this?  This is ridiculous.

You all know the auditorium - it was the set for the political rally in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? The auditorium has beautiful plaster leading up to a gorgeous old wood ceiling.  The building dates to the 1880s, and is part of a complex that dates to the 1830s.  It belonged to the Sisters of Mercy, who focused on educating children in Vicksburg from the 19th century onward.

There is a lot of history there.

Understandably, there is also a certain reluctance to indiscriminate ripping out of portions of old walls to get at honeybee hives in the walls.  That means constraints on how I do my bee removal job.  Preference to avoid damage to the walls inside.  To avoid damage to the floors upstairs.  To avoid any impact to the exterior of the building.

Quite a lot of restrictions, but I understand them all; I am both an antiquarian and a preservationist.  So this fits right in with what I was feeling.  But it promised to my my work a lot harder.

First step, though, is to find the bees.
I walked through the areas impacted by the bees, and to everyone's surprise, the bees were not there.

No bees.

The dark stain is oozing honey.

OK, so that is not entirely true.  There were bees on the outside wall, licking up honey from the side of the building, where honey was oozing through the mortar.  There were bees buzzing around the gutter.  And the one, lonely, exhausted bee on the inside window upstairs. But what I expected to see was a group of bees, working to cool the entrance to the hive.

There were no such bees.

So the brainstorming began.  My coworker LeeAnn and I  joined Stacey Mahoney, the director of the center, Isaac, the caretaker of the facilities, and Nancy Bell, the director, and we looked at the classroom, at the auditorium, and the outside.

The place is haunted (so says an ex-employee), and so we discussed the idea of the Ghost Bees - that the bees were all dead, and that they were just creating a wall-ooze to frighten us.  Plausible.  We also discussed whether the bees were simply scared to death by the ghosts that haunt the place.  Sure.  Why not?  But the best line of the day went to Nancy Bell:

Me, pointing to the wall with honey dripping out: Do you know what this reminds me of?
Nancy Bell: The Amityville Horror?
Me:  Well, NOW it does.

(I later recanted, wishing that I had said Zombees from the start.)

After observing the situation from the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the southwest corner.... I finally told them I didn't think that the bees had stayed.  I gave my reasons:

• No entrance.  There are bees around the gutter, and other bees along the honey stain on the outside wall of the building. But as I mentioned before, with temperatures hovering around 95 degrees, there would be a beard of bees expected, and a high number of bees entering and exiting constantly from some location near the stain.
• Honey stain.  The honey that was dripping from both inside and outside walls indicates that the bees are not caring for the hive. If bees were present in the hive, they would be working to regulate the temperature of the hive and to reinforce any breach of the honey resources.  
• Dead bees.  Dead bees in the upstairs indicated significant activity in the wall, with some access to the room.  But the absence of live bees of any serious quantity (I only observed two inside the whole time we were there) indicates that the bees were no longer entering from the original location.  

The original hive likely had an opening that was explored by bees, who could not return through the same location, and became trapped in the room.  Attracted to the light of the window, they died and dropped to the floor.  Once the bees were no longer in the walls. Far fewer were redirected into the room.

There are a bunch of reasons why a hive of bees would leave an established home - what we refer to as absconding.  I explained it in terms of moving into an apartment complex: If you find out it is uncomfortable (temperature, disturbances, too crowded, poor ventilation, etc) you take whatever you can from the apartment and move.  You can also have a problem with the queen, and the hive will abscond.  

But mostly, we don't have any idea WHY they left.  We just know that they did.

Once they left, the temperature inside the walls got high, the wax in the hive left behind began to deform, and honey began to leak from the comb.  Meanwhile, with no bees there to protect their resources, the honey started to flow. It traveled down the wall from its original location, and pooled at the first location where a cross bar prevented further downward flow. At that point, the warm, less viscous honey exploited every crevice to flow out of the location.

Both inside and outside.

The problem, I explained, is now quite firmly not a beekeeper problem.  But rather a how-do-we-get-the-honey-out-of-the-walls problem.

Brainstorming continued.  A tongue-in-cheek suggestion was floated that we refer to it as a miraculous font ("Of Sister So-and-So") and charge donors $100 for a portion of the honey.

Finally, we agreed to the drilling of small holes at the ceiling line inside, to allow the honey to drain out from the walls, but with a straw (or plastic tube) inserted to direct the flow to a place where it could be collected.  Instead of the way it was: dripping down the walls.

An hour later, I had several small holes, invisible from the ground level, and straws (which were VERY visible from the ground level) inserted.  And no flow at all.

A few modifications later, I reported back to Stacey what I had done.

Me:  So, do you want the two pieces of good news, or the one piece of bad news?
Stacey:  There is good news?  Give me that.
Me: Good news #1.  I was right.  There were no bees.  That means when I drilled the hole in the wall, no horde of angry bees filled the entire auditorium.  I guess that is more of a 'not bad news' than a truly 'good news' story, but I work with what I can.
Stacey:....
Me: Good news #2:  There is not a huge quantity of honey in the walls.  A full hive can have 100 pounds of honey - about 8 gallons (I think I actually said 12 gallons...).  And with that much honey in the walls, you would have a spurt of honey when you opened a hole in the walls.  And we didn't.
Stacey:  That is good news, I guess.
Me:  ...which leads to the bad news.  The straws did not serve to divert the honey.  There was not any build up inside the walls that I could find with the holes that I drilled.  So what I did was to stuff paper towels in each crevice where honey was seeping out.  The paper towels will eventually saturate, and will have to be replaced, but for the short term, you should be able to clean the floor and not have drips.  At least for a few days.

I am headed back tomorrow to put the ladder back up, wipe everything down, and insert a dowel and some putty into the hole.  But in the meantime, I will just pray for the soul of Sister So-and-So, and maybe find a market for the honey from her Zombees.