Look what the storm blew in

It's huge! It's width is the same as the length of my foot, and it must have stood 6 inches off the ground (and that was with the bottom all smashed in from the impact of the fall). I'd already broken it apart a bit with a big stick from a distance (checking for bees before messing around with moving it!!) before I thought to take a picture



As I suspected, it was empty, THANK GOODNESS! Of course, poor Jared was the one to come across it in the yard while we were doing clean-up from the storm. After getting stung 31 (or more!) times last summer, he understandably has an issue with bees, and was NOT happy (to say the least) to discover the nest.

The nest was quite soggy, and built up in several layers (like a cake!), which were all really moldy on the bottom. I'm a little horrified that huge nest was up in a tree in our yard this summer and we didn't notice! I'd have expected to see a steady stream of bees coming and going!! However, minus the bees, the nest WAS pretty neat to inspect. Had it not been soggy, I'd have tried to salvage it for the kids to share with their classes.