What a difference eight months and two different seasons make on one place. One of the small towns that has amazing abandoned places is Miami, AZ. Sharon and I have a favorite Mexican food restaurant in town and usually need to walk off lunch afterwards. We have no limits of abandoned homes, businesses, and warehouses to take pictures of. One of the places we seem to check out every time we are in town is the place we call the "Bee Apartments". It got its name because of the over 4 foot beehive tucked under the rotting boards of the porch's overhang and the many bees that make their home there.
The first time we stumbled across this little gem was last December 2010 when we were on the hunt for abandoned places for our book
Abandoned Places: Abandoned Memories (Desert Edition). We saw it from the rear at first and then went around to the front. It looked small from the backside, but in front we could see it was much bigger and possibly an apartment building. When Sharon went up the cement steps to check out the inside of the place, she was stopped by the buzzing of many bees. She noticed a huge beehive inside the porch overhang. We took whatever pictures we could and left to find more abandoned structures.
Last weekend, we went back to Globe and stopped in Miami along the way. After our delicious lunch, we drove around and of course had to see our famous "Bee Apartments". Because it was now summer, it was almost covered with the growth of trees and shrubs. A neighbor saw us and asked if we were going to buy the place. We just told him we were checking it out. He did tell us the place had been abandoned for 15 years, a fact we did not know. We were curious to see if the bees were still there, and they were. The hive was much larger and there were tons more bees. Perhaps the bees saved us from falling through the rotting boards, but we will never know. With the hive getting bigger and bigger, we expect their honeycomb nest to eventually fall through the decaying boards.
The pictures below are showing the difference the place looked from the winter of 2010 and the summer of 2011. I put the shots that are simular together with the winter photos on top and what the place looked like eight months later in the summer 2011.
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| winter 2010 |
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| summer 2011 |
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| winter 2010 |
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| summer 2011 |
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| winter 2010 |
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| summer 2011 |
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| winter 2010 |
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| summer 2011 |
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| winter 2010 |
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| summer 2011 |
Very cool sis! It's always neat to see how things progress or deteriorate from season to season. Love these!
ReplyDeleteWe almost missed the place because of the heavy growth of trees and shrubs. It covered most of the buildings. I have to admit I liked the place in the winter with the barren trees. It gave the place a more eerie feel to it.
ReplyDeleteMan, you can really see the weight of that enormous bee hive holding down the boards on the underneath of the balcony. When that things smashes--oh my gosh!
ReplyDeleteThe bees are not going to be happy when their hive finally hits the ground. I wouldn't want to be around thousands of angry bees!
ReplyDeleteI recently went back to a place that I had gone to about 3 years ago. I also went in a different season and it was fascinating to see the changes. On my site, a chair had completely rotted and the overgrowth, like in your pictures, was so much more.
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