When a queen bee decides to make an unwelcome move, it is Frank Kostyra's business to redirect her highness. It is 7 a.m. The dogs are restless at the house on Fairhope's Liberty Street. Calvin has noticed the walls humming for about a month. He likes the way the noise whispers him to sleep. It is consistent, like his breath. The sound pauses but never completely stops. Trey, a three-legged canine, has watched the daily stream of bugs flow past the living room window, but they are outside. No worry. Peg, blurred and muffled by age, is clueless. But this morning, something is up, and all three retreat to mama's room. The hum is louder, more insistent. Activity seethes behind the wall. Things are buzzing. Outside, a dark clot forms where crumbling stucco and foundation meet. The wall hemorrhages bees. The first wave of 30,000 winged wafters is airborne. By nature, honeybees nest in hollow trees and cave-like crevices. The void between the heart pine lathe and the stuccoed exterior must have once seemed an ideal place to hang a bee-birthing factory. But, for whatever reason, the colony's royal has declared this moving day. Preparing for the journey, worker bees gorge themselves on their most prized possession, nectar. When they reach a new home, special glands in their abdomens will turn the sugar into fresh comb. The queen will go right to work producing the next generation. Thousands of loyal bees escort their monarch out of the flight hole and into a circular pattern above the yard. The queen chooses a swarm tree and disappears into the squirming clump of subjects that cluster on a high branch. THE BEE GUY The two-legged occupant of the house is equally prepared. She makes an apiarian 911 call to the beekeeper she contacted about removing the colony. The unscheduled flight just pushes the operation forward a few days. By the time Frank Kostyra arrives and starts deploying the organized clutter of props, a swarm of curious neighbors circle the scene. "That's my bee guy," beams the resident, "my personal beekeeper." Luckily for those assembled, swarming bees do not sting (unlike their wasp cousins). When they desert a hive, they have no honey or young left to defend. Like humans after Thanksgiving dinner, they are so full they don't feel like going out and fighting. Kostyra, who has kept bees since returning from Vietnam in the early '70s, quickly launches his offensive. In an instant, he is up the tree, scaling an extension ladder braced against a notched one-by-six to prevent a collapse into the foliage. Dressed in tank top, shorts, and a beekeeper's veil, he deftly harvests the buzzy clump of honeybees. He shakes them into a box, hoping the queen is among them. Where she goes, the workers follow. Back on the ground, he empties his catch into a nuclear hive, a bee box half the standard size. It is already stocked with starter honeycomb, ready for her majesty to start working. Bees, each with an assigned task, gather at the bottom entrance hole. Now, humans become the show. Neighbors drift in and out of the traffic pattern, heedless of the relocating colony. Each sidles timidly up to the mini-hive, narrowly eying the insects. Realizing they are not being stung, they capture the photo op on camera phones. Like children whistling in a graveyard, they trade corny bee jokes to soothe themselves. IMPORTANCE OF PILLINATORS Kostyra is happy to transplant the insects. A mysterious phenomenon called colony collapse disorder has destroyed many wild bees and now threatens commercial hives. He knows America is totally dependent on honeybees. One bite of food in every three is linked to pollinated plants. Without bees, a lot of our food would never grow. The annual value of honeybees in Alabama agriculture is estimated at $200 million. The action shifts, as someone notices bees still flying to and from the wall. The yard is like an airport with regular takeoffs and landings. There is nothing random about the process. Outbound bees leave the flight hole and follow a prescribed path to treetop level. Once they reach cruise altitude, they circle three times and fly off to a pollen source communicated to them by a sister's dance. Inbound, with bellies full of nectar or leg-baskets stuffed with pollen, they make an approach along the departure path, hover briefly, and are inhaled into their cluster of peers. As Kostyra says, "The mind that created all this thought the whole thing through." Realizing there must be another queen in the colony, the beekeeper shifts to plan B. He changes his armament to smoker, saw and pry bar. This time, he dons full protective clothing, above, for the sweaty assault on the wall. Kostyra taps the surface with a tack hammer until he hears the dull sound of a comb-filled void about seven feet up. He smokes the bees to both calm them and make them active, and then gently brushes them aside. COMB THROUGH His diamond-tipped saw blade sends smoke, dust, and sparks flying as he rips a rectangle in the hardened material. Prying it loose, he exposes an expanse of new white comb. Workers instinctively form a living shield, protecting it with their bodies. The beekeeper snatches nectar-dripping comb right out of the wall and passes around chunks for sampling, below. Not yet concentrated enough to be honey, it dribbles down chins in streams of sticky slickness. "The comb is kinda gross," says one taster. Its residue has become a crumbly mouthful of taste-free goop that she is afraid to swallow but too polite to spit out. It is sort of like those wax lips you chewed on as a kid. Kostyra cuts larger pieces of comb to fit inside the wooden frames of a standard hive. Securing the honeycomb with rubber bands, he inserts it into the box and shovels in bees with a dustpan. When workers drape like a bee-beard from the entrance hole, he knows the queen is on board. His mission is complete. He leaves the hive for a few days, allowing stragglers to rejoin their comrades. Then, under the cover of darkness (the best time to sneak up on bees), he covers the opening with a bit of screen and drives them to his bee yard. Back on Liberty Street, life had changed. Calvin does not sleep so soundly, Trey misses the company, and Peg remains clueless - in her contented sort of way. Image information: Photos by Dennis Holt.