From: "Dave Ings" 

Phil,

Your personal life has the most interesting anecdotes. You've posted quite
a few here over the years. I hope one day to be able to share a beer with
you, to hear a few more!
--
Regards,
Dave Ings,
Toronto, Canada

"Phil Payne"  wrote in
message news:446e1dd4{at}w3.nls.net...
> http://www.local6.com/news/9242978/detail.html
>
> "A buzzing noise behind the walls of a family's new home in Houston led to
> the discovery of more than 200,000 bees swarming inside the structure."
>
> Yeah.
>
> My mother bought the Mill House, Isham in 1973.  2600 square foot floor
> area, seven bedrooms, etc.
>
> Built in 1827.
>
> We lived there until 1978, when we went to Germany.  Then we came back in
> 1986.
>
> We used to sit outside the back door on summer mornings.  A cup of tea and
> a
> bacon sandwich.  The bees were a fact of life - roughly once a minute a
> bee
> would appear and locate a small hole in the brickwork a couple of feet
> away
> from the back door.  And every minute or so a bee would leave.
>
> In 1985, our mortgage company made us lift the old kitchen floor (cardinal
> red tiles on lime mortar - not given a trace of trouble for 150 years) and
> replace it with a standard "solid floor" - a rubble base with blinding
> sand,
> a damp-proof membrane and concrete.  So we dug it out one Sunday, and in
> doing so found the bees' tunnel - through into the centre of the house.
> Late on the Sunday evening, we locked up the empty house.
>
> I didn't get back until the Friday evening.  The house has nineteen rooms
> and an appropriate number of windows.  In front of every window was a pile
> of dead bees.
>
> You know those big black refuse sacks?  We filled two and a half with dead
> bees.
>
> --
>  Phil Payne
>  http://www.isham-research.co.uk
>  +44 7833 654 800
>
>

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