Bees in a chimney

Because of my fear of hight's, I don't like climbing ladders. Sometimes you have no choice and you simply have to do it. I was called to a house in Oak Park where bees were getting into a home through the chimney. A neighbor was kind enough to lend us a ladder , I put it up against the chimney and started climbing. The ladder officially was too short and I had to stand on the top step and cling to the chimney in order to look inside the chimney.
There was a piece of metal on top to prevent bird from entering, but bees are of course way smaller.

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This is a close up of the top of the chimney, to put things in perspective: there is a bee hovering on the left side.

I grabbed inside the chimney, there were maybe 8 bees in there on top of this piece of comb:



After careful inspection at home I found there were eggs inside the comb:

But there weren't enough bees to keep them warm, and there suddenly was no queen!

Next time when I'm in the neighborhood, i will put some fine bee-resistant hardware cloth underneath the big one, to keep the bees out.

My first chimney bees :-)