Bees drive woman out of home
Lorna Shaw felt like she was starring in a horror movie when the bees kept coming as fast as she swatted them in her La Grange Park apartment. Then she looked outside.
“There were thousands upon thousands of them. We thought it was a dust cloud,” Shaw said of a swarm outside the Forest Glen Apartments on April 15.
Alarmed, she called building management for help and consulted experts for advice. She estimated swatting more than 100 bees, and her boyfriend was stung.
A day after the bees moved in, workers sealed the hole in the building where the bees were coming in and out — which only made the problem worse. The next day, Shaw found 30 bees in her bedroom. She spent two nights in a hotel and then pulled her mattress to her living room for safety.
“One of the things you don’t want to do is seal that entrance. They will then look for another exit,” said Russ Higgins, a commercial agriculture educator with the University of Illinois Extension service in Shabbona.
Higgins said the best strategy would have been to consult a beekeeper to remove the hive or try a trained exterminator licensed to use insecticides not available to homeowners.
By April 20, maintenance workers made a hole in Shaw’s bedroom wall and removed a nest. She said she was grateful, but she’s still finding a few bees each day.
Gary Gates of La Grange, past president of the Cook-dupage Beekeepers Association, said the group has a network of beekeepers willing to come out and relocate a swarm. He said the early spring warmth prompted bees to become active earlier.
“Bees are very docile,” he said. “Normally they’re just focused on getting things taken care of, but if you disturb the hive, you could get stung.”
Very merry millionaire
Harold Gibson knew he had something when he returned to Dave’s Liquors in Waukegan with his winning Merry Millionaire Second-chance ticket from the Illinois Lottery and showed it to owner Hitesh Patel. He just underestimated his good fortune.
“He showed me his paperwork and said, ‘Is this $300,000?’ And I said, ‘No, dude — that’s $3 million.’ ”
“I remember it was a Friday the 13th,” Gibson said of the encounter earlier this month. “Luckiest Friday the 13th of my life.”
Dogged determination
Ellie Dicola has wanted a dog since she was in kindergarten. And the 9-year-old has finally gotten her wish — by earning it.
When Ellie started asking for a dog, her father, John, told her she had to read 500 books first.
“I thought she’d never collect,” he said.
Even Ellie thought, “I’m never going to do that.”
But Ellie said her mother, Becky, encouraged her, and they kept track of the books she read.
In March, Ellie, a fourth-grader at Crow Island School in Winnetka, read her 500th book,
Two weeks ago, Ellie and her family brought home Cody, an 8-week-old golden retriever.
Ellie has inspired her siblings. Her 6-year-old brother, Peter, gets a bunny if he reads 500 books, and 4-year-old Matilda wants a gerbil.
Ellie said she might ask for a car next.
Endangered buildings
The old Prentice Women’s Hospital downtown, a west suburban home built to house the widows of Civil War soldiers and a West Garfield Park neighborhood landmark are among the state’s 10 Most Endangered Historic Places.
The 18th annual list, announced Tuesday by Landmarks Illinois, is meant to call attention to historic places in danger of being demolished.
“The sites named to the list are all exceptionally important,” Jean Follett of Landmarks Illinois said in a news release. “By calling attention to them, we hope to encourage solutions for their preservation.”
The Chicago area buildings include the Hotel Guyon, the old hospital and the Maywood Home for Soldiers’ Widows.
Completed in 1928 as a residential hotel, the Guyon, at 4000 W. Washington Blvd., is a prominent West Garfield Park landmark that has been vacant for almost a decade. Since a 1980s renovation, it has had numerous owners and is in demolition court because of code violations, the release said.
The Maywood Home for Soldiers’ Widows was built in 1924. It has been vacant since 2003 and owned by the village since 2008.
The hospital, a Bertrand Goldberg-designed building at 333 E. Superior St., has been vacant since September 2011, when ownership reverted from Northwestern Memorial Hospital to Northwestern University after the hospital moved into a new building. The university wants to demolish it and use the site for a new medical research facility. The concrete, clover leaf-shaped structure, built in 1975, is representative of Goldberg’s organic architectural designs and “highly adaptable for re-use due to an open floor plate structural system,” the release said.