Bees.
Bumble bees, to be specific. Big, fat, noisy bumble bees. Lots of them. Far, far too many of them.
In our dryer vent.
Oh yeah - that was fun.
A few weeks ago I noticed a few bee's buzzing by me as I stood near the outside venting for the dryer. I *thought* I saw them flying up inside the vent itself. I mentioned it to D but really - what where the chances of anything serious being there? It was only one, two maybe three bee. And inside the vent? Nah. That just didn't make sense. (Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?)
Fast forward to last week when the heat pump guys where here installing the system. I hear "Hey Casey - I think you might have a bee problem over here. There are a lot of bees flying all over the place."
Freakin' great.
We called around and found someone to come out, confirm the problem and give us an estimate. They said if they were honey bees we were on our own as they cannot endanger honey bees (umm...ok...but it's ok for them to endanger my family? Doesn't seem fair but whatever....). If they were honey bees a bee keeper would need to be called to collect them. Honey bees they were not. Big fat bumble bees they were.
For a mere $225.00 those bees are history.
And for another mere $250.00 we will be having our dryer vent system redone. Apparently it's the old venting (and probably hasn't been cleaned since it was installed in 1978. Can you say "fire hazard"?) and should be replaced with new, non-corrugated venting since our dryer output is only about 25% of capacity (which is why it takes two cycles to dry a load. Huh. Go figure. It's also why the bees found it to be the perfect place to make a hive/nest.
Oy. Sometimes it would be nice to have a landlord to call and say "Problem here. Please fix." But on the other hand....it's nice to have a place of our own - bees and all.
5 comments:
Enjoyed your writing...And you're right-landlords suck!
We had that dryer problem, so clogged up and full of crap that nothing got dried. NO bees though. But we did get it professionally cleaned out and it paid for itself in a month or so of having a way more efficient dryer! Good luck!
Perfect timing on this post. I was JUST thinking about owning vs landlords and thinking that at this *very moment in time* it would be nice to have someone else fix our problems.
Just in this last week... dishwasher leaked everywhere causing various other problems and last night I broke the garage door... glass everywhere. Boy did I want to curse LOUDLY! Instead I mumbled something fierce.
I'm glad your bees are gone but boy what a hefty price! I hope your dryer works like new again with the new venting! Funny about the honey bee thing. Fortunately we could have called Carie's dad in on that one.
Right I love that we own, but when it comes to the problems, I so wish I could pawn it off on someone else. LOL!
Glad the bees are gone.
Glad to see your post. Having same problem with bees in my dryer. Luckily my landlord is my Dad! Hoping he can find a way to cure the problem or else I will have to continue to use dryer heat as my weapon!
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