Attack of the Killer... I mean... Honey Bees!

On days I work, Mike always find adventure at home.  Today the conversation was as follows:

Mike: "Well, Jake has been throwing up, Anthony is doing his school, and oh yeah, we're bee keepers now"
Me: "What?  Poor Jake, is he okay?  What are you talking about?" (thinking a honey bee colony would be a nice Mothers Day gift, but not in our current house in the suburbs!)
Mike: "Jake is doing okay but we have a swarm of bees under the trampoline.  I called the City Animal Control and they said they don't deal with that, so a Bee Keeper is on his way to get them."
Me: silence... I mean, what do you say to that!?  "OK... a bee keeper, really??"

So, I hurried up to finish my work and I headed home.  As we were loading Anthony in the car for T-ball practice (poor Jake couldn't go due to his illness) a BIG red diesel truck pulled up and out jumped a very busy little Bee man.  After assessing the situation, he donned his white suit and little hat and sucked up the swarm in a carry case.  I was thinking: "come on now, I have a shop vac, I could have done that!"  He said the normal hive he sees is 15-20 thousand, but this one was unique... we had about 50 thousand... and they were aggressive (he got stung 3x despite the bee suit).  OK, OK, maybe I couldn't have done that... the first sting and I would be running around the yard screaming like a crazy lady, arms flailing about like an old-time cartoon character!

After the Bee Man was done, he told me they were honey bees who most likely outgrew their hive.  The queen is very heavy with eggs so she can't fly far.  Most likely she landed on the trampoline to rest and the rest of the bees surrounded her to protect her.  Scouting bees were then probably sent out to find a permanent home and we were lucky they didn't find a crack in the house... or else the whole hive would have moved in and he would have had to remove dry wall to get them out!  Phew... what an adventure of an evening!

So, $189 later, we are, spare 100 or so stragglers, Bee-Free!  The left over bees will move on in 1-5 days he said, once they can't find the scent of the queen anymore.  As I handed the nice little Bee man the check I said "you could charge ANYTHING for this.. people would pay it!"  After all, he did come from across town... Irving I think... 1 1/2 hours of driving to do 15 (maybe!) minutes of work.  Considering the price of diesel and my ooged-out-ness, that price seems pretty fair to me :)

50,000 bees doesn;t look that big!

The little Bee-Man

Sucking it up... he stopped to take a picture