It took a whole Saturday of ripping duct tape and plastic off and around the pool, four gallons of chlorine, a half gallon of pool acid, two packages of stabilizer, and two visits from Alan my pool guy, but I’m pleased to say that the swimming pool is back and operational. It’s not that 100% eye-popping clear you’re always looking to attain just yet, but it’s pretty close. There was a little bee activity on Saturday, as three scouts from the hive (or from a different one, I didn’t get their confessions before they were put to death: one done in with dish soap, one squashed by the dish soap spray bottle, and the third drowned), but I haven’t seen any since.

Trying to clean up the mess that lay at the bottom of the pool was a little more work than I anticipated. I skimmed it out the best I could and the pool vacuum tried its best, but we got a clog in the line that Alan had to blast out with his top-secret pool spray weapon – it looks like a silencer that you screw onto a hose and turns a trickle of water into a nuclear-force spray that obliterates anything in its path – in this case, the pipes running between the filter and the pool. Very cool.

So the pool is back. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to stay on bee patrol and kill any scouts that want to check out the scene – I don’t want all this time and effort to go to waste. After that, however, I’m just gonna let things live and let live. If I see a bee I’m not going to freak out, but if I start seeing any kind of interested gathering I’ll return to Dirty Harry mode and start shooting first and asking questions later. But while the pool is back, that doesn’t mean I’m done with it: the regulator that maintains the water level broke off in my hand while I was trying to adjust it. Not sure what that will cost or what the effort is to fix it. You just can’t win.