We had bees! We actually still have them but they should be gone later tonight.
A few weeks ago we noticed a few bees buzzing around an old wooden box we had out back. I went over and opened it to look inside and didn’t see anything. Then about a week ago Ann and Jenny saw some of them buzzing around near the same box but this time there were a lot. Now we must take an intermission.
While growing up in Tucson and going to Flowing Wells I had a friend named Roger Taylor. He was with me from Kindergarten on up and graduated with me but I hadn’t seen him since then. A few weeks ago I learned of a web site that is getting my class together for a reunion later this year. On that site was a map that shows where everyone is. Roger showed up as being in the San Fernando Valley not far from me. I happened to exchange some messages with Lynette McGee who is still in touch with Roger and Mike Keller, another school mate. They got a message to Roger to contact me so he did and we met for lunch. I found out he is also interested in riding quads so I invited him to Pismo over this last weekend. At that time I found out he was also a beekeeper. Now back to the bee story.
When we got back from Pismo we decided he should come and get the bees so today he did. I learned some interesting things and got some great pics. Here’s one and the rest are in my gallery.
So it turned out to be an actual honey making hive?
Comment by Donna — Thursday April 23, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
Yep. He even gave me a little piece of honeycomb with honey in it. It was like liquid sunshine!
Comment by Don — Thursday April 23, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
Wow, I’ve been behind on reading blogs, and didn’t realize that you had posted the same day as I did. When you commented on my blog about having bees, I thought you meant at some time in the past.
Yours went a lot further than ours did. We caught them before they moved in and started a hive. But ours were in the attic and garage, so that made them a lot easier to detect.
I suspect that if there was a hive in our back yard, Apollo would have discovered it pretty early on, perhaps to his chagrin. He was trying to eat one that made it into the house (we had about 10 altogether that made it into the house).
How much honey did he get altogether? How many bees? Aren’t you allergic to bee stings?
Comment by Daryl — Friday April 24, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Mine were a tad annoying but having them in the house would have really been bad. Glad you didn’t have a hive anywhere as that would have been a lot harder to remove.
He didn’t take the honey by itself, he took the whole hive. I don’t think he’s going to harvest the honey until they fill a whole hive box. He only had to use 2 or 3 racks to hold the whole thing.
He said there were about 5,000 bees in the hive. I’m allergic to wasps not bees. Seems strange but there is a difference in their venom.
Comment by Don — Friday April 24, 2009 @ 9:59 am
Getting stung by a wasp is no fun whether you are allergic or not.
The bee sting in my foot hurt like crazy for a minute or two, but I iced it immediately and it didn’t even swell. It felt fine the next day. Probably a weakened bee that only gave me a little venom.
I don’t think my kids have ever been stung by either bees or wasps. Sheltered lives?
Comment by Daryl — Saturday April 25, 2009 @ 10:48 am
Didn’t he leave his stinger in your foot? We used to learn that they did, and after stinging and leaving the stinger, they died.
Comment by Mom — Monday April 27, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
Whoops! Wrong son. Glad you didn’t get stung. No use tempting fate, or bees
Comment by Mom — Monday April 27, 2009 @ 10:26 pm
As I understand it, Africanized bees don’t always leave their stinger or die. Anyway, there was no stinger left behind. I think he might have been dead when I stepped on him, and I just got a little poison.
Comment by Daryl — Tuesday April 28, 2009 @ 1:52 pm