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Bees!

I bet I hoovered 150 live bees off the bedroom window Saturday morning. It started with two or three bees the day before. Then six or seven.

We’re continually being hectored about bees, how the hives are dying and we must do everything we can to make our gardens bee friendly. We were opening windows and shoo’ing them out gently at first.

Then we woke up to a bedroom full of the little bastards, and we both got stung, and it was all, fuck that noise.

We found the tiny hole in the bedroom wall they were coming out of. Things improved when we plugged it, but not completely. Four hundred year old house. Not exactly air tight.

The Council couldn’t do anything because it’s indoors (presumably in the chimney), so we got a private bee guy on the line. He got out of his van and just pointed to that ginormous swarm of bees on the chimneystack there.

Huh. We missed that somehow.

After much poking and peeking and trying to reach them with the hose we decided to leave it and see if they swarmed off of their own free will. Which they did later that night.

And that was the great Midsummer’s Day Bee Adventure.

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 23, 2014, 8:01 pm

I can’t resist taking this opportunity to repost the greatest .gif on the internet: Bees!


Comment from Deborah
Time: June 23, 2014, 10:28 pm

Last week a home in San Antonio needed a bee rescue. The hive was 4 ft by 4 ft by 6 inches, and had about 200,000 honey bees in it.

Because your house is so old, are you bound by a council code (or some other entity) that reviews and approves any changes you want to make to the structure?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 23, 2014, 10:58 pm

Boy, are we ever, Deborah! It’s very strict and very expensive.

So much so, many just ignore it and hope not to get caught. (Not us, I hasten to add. We don’t mess with authority).


Comment from Armybrat
Time: June 23, 2014, 11:46 pm

Bring the bee guy back. You have a hive that went amiss. Hopefully they’re not entrenched enough that he can scrape them off and lure the rest of the stragglers off with pheromes. They’ve lost their queen and are looking for a place to set a new hive. You need to stop this before the set a new queen. My brother in law has kept bees for over 30 years.


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: June 23, 2014, 11:58 pm

So how does the bee un-friendly garden work? If you don’t have bees, you don’t get cucumbers, tomatoes, or anything else with a blossom. One can only eat so many carrots.

And who is on “the Council”? Sounds a little ominous. Do they wear robes? Are axes and pentagrams involved?


Comment from CrabbyOldBat
Time: June 24, 2014, 12:13 am

We had a hive in our attic once. The bees came through the ceiling light fixture into the kitchen. We waited for summer and the hot weather drove them out. There were never too many that we couldn’t just guide them outside through a screenless window (screen removed for this very purpose).


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: June 24, 2014, 12:22 am

This is a rare chance to mention a weird fact that I happen to know for some reason – Honey Bees, while great little pollinators, are not native to North America…. the British Colonists introduced them… “In fact, several early American writers, including Thomas Jefferson, reported that honey bees were called “white man’s flies.”

http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcom/newscolumns/archives/OSL/1999/November/111199OSL.html

Since I’m on a roll, I’ll also toss out my second kinda related weird fact – earthworms aren’t native to North America either – those damn colonists brought them too.

http://www.allaboutwildlife.com/invasive-species/invasive-eartworms-in-american-soil/4545


Comment from mojo
Time: June 24, 2014, 12:38 am

“Well, I’m a King Bee
Buzzin’ all ’round your hive…”


Comment from drew458
Time: June 24, 2014, 12:49 am

when the honey starts dripping through the walls, and you notice that the entire house kind of vibrates at night, you’ll realize that the hive was bigger than you thought. And then the mega-queen will come for you but it will be too late. Get out. Get out now!!

Bees. Ick. Eww. I get hives just thinking about them.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: June 24, 2014, 12:54 am

Pity they didn’t leave any honey. Rats!

Of course it would be your luck it would be droobling out the bedroom wall.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: June 24, 2014, 1:15 am

Its possible, if not likely, that this swarm was a portion of the hive still in your house that split off to look for a new home. Just something to consider.


Comment from Deborah
Time: June 24, 2014, 2:18 am

My landlords planted rosemary everywhere—it’s one of those landscaping plants that the deer won’t eat, and it has flourished. The bees love the tiny blue flowers, so I have heaping mounds of “humming” rosemary all over the place. And lantana, which smells like cat pee when you brush against it, but the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds like it, too.


Comment from Nina
Time: June 24, 2014, 4:04 am

Bees mean honey, and I like honey.


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: June 24, 2014, 4:20 am

Bees mean business, & I like business.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: June 24, 2014, 11:22 am

Vegetable is correct.

Are your stove and chimney a fairly closed system? We’re still in swarm season, and bees lurrrve to set up in chimneys. If they’ve set up inside your, hilarity may ensue.

Painful, flaming, hilarity.


Comment from Mojo
Time: June 24, 2014, 6:16 pm

Of the “Fountain of Flaming Bees” variety?

Hell, I’d pay cash money to see that!


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: June 24, 2014, 7:20 pm

Uh, build a coal fire and drive them away or nuke the site from orbit.
I was swarmed by wild bees. I don’t play.


Comment from Mike James
Time: June 24, 2014, 8:05 pm

I was swimming once and got out to get a soda and kicked a nest of mud daubers when I walking through some tall grass. There’s something about the buzz emitted by a swarm of bees, wasps, or hornets, a frequency that connects directly to a mostly idle Homo Erectus part of the brain that makes one willing to shove family members out of the way to escape it, if only for a moment. God bless Ortho.


Comment from David Gillies
Time: June 24, 2014, 8:42 pm

Apparently bees like borage. My Dad used to grow it in the garden. It’s good in Pimm’s as well.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: June 24, 2014, 9:06 pm

We seem to be more or less bee free at the moment.

There’s a liner in our chimney. The bees, we think, were inside the chimney but outside the liner. A fire would make them hot, maybe hot enough to leave, but not necessarily.

If we see any signs, the bee man will uncap the fireplace in the bedroom (which is sealed and not used) and put a poison bomb up there. We’d all rather not do that.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: June 24, 2014, 11:17 pm

The heat doesn’t bother them so much as smoke. Its very bad for little bee breathing, and they can’t hold their breath. In controlled amounts it puts them to sleep. In greater amounts, the choke and die and fall into the fire.


Comment from Veeshir
Time: June 26, 2014, 3:29 am

I’d never seen that gif, that slayed me.

It is indeed the greatest gif in the history of everything.


Comment from Oceania
Time: June 26, 2014, 4:37 am

Oh sooo cute

more bee pics!


Comment from Oceania
Time: June 30, 2014, 10:36 am

The Apiarists amongst demand more bee pics!

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