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The years-long battle to demolish the old Northridge Mall hit yet another challenge.Thousands of bees.After a drawn-out court battle over what to do with the property, the city of Milwaukee finally acquired the mall back in January. During the teardown process, a jobsite supervisor found two hives buzzing with thousands of honeybees in the long abandoned building near 76th and Brown Deer.”Right away, I thought about just to save them,” Nazim Agushi said. Agushi is a jobsite supervisor for Balestrieri Environmental and Development, the company in charge of removing asbestos from the mall during the demolition process. “I did remove the whole plywood from here, and it was located right in this corner,” Agushi said. Agushi found one of the hives in the old JCPenney building and a second where the old Younkers department store was located. “The minute I saw them, there’s no way I’m going to get a firehose and blow them out. I’m going to save them. Whatever it takes,” Agushi said.He worked to remove both hives and the honeycombs the bees had been forming.”The bees, they don’t bother you if you don’t really mess around with them. They kind of knew me, it seems like. I guess they like me,” Agushi said. The feeling is mutual. “I worked with bees before back home. Like in the days before I got to this country,” Agushi said. Agushi came to America as a refugee from Kosovo, during the war there in 1999. He said before he left everything, including his home behind, he often worked with bees with his father. “I try to go almost every year, back there. But my dad passed away already,” Agushi said. “Does this remind you of him?” WISN 12 News reporter Kendall Keys asked Agushi.”Yes,” he said. He’s a man on a mission to save the bees. He says overnight Thursday, while the bees are dormant in the hive, he’ll relocate both hives to a farm in Elkhorn. The farm is owned by Balestrieri and already has 14 hives. “You want to do it early because you don’t want to leave any bees behind,” Agushi said. Agushi said the bees were busy making honey during their time in Northridge. He was able to extract about a gallon of it. The asbestos abatement and demolition process is still ongoing at the mall and is estimated to take a year to complete.