BEE PORN IS MY VICE.
You could say I am the original bee stalker.
The bee paparazzi.
Camera in hand, I chase them around my yard and other gardens to record their fuzzy thoraxes as they wiggle and root around in the interior of flowers.
Sometimes I get up early enough in the morning to see them, exhausted from the day before, sprawled on the petals of their food source, waiting for the sun to warm them so they can begin their daily orgy foraging for pollen.
I love bees as much soil, flowers, vegetables and gardening.
Native bumbles with their pollen-coated feet and big, warm fuzzy bodies.
The big bumbles and the not so big bumbles.
Honey bees that come to life once it’s warm enough for them to fly and spend hours amidst the coreopsis, bee balm and lavender.
The beneficial insects — the little hovers flies that look like bees — are drool worthy,too.
Really, how do they manage to suspend themselves in one place like that?
They all add a meditative air to the yard, even when they’re getting busy.
But that sense of calm is over and I’m getting ready to strap a couple of cans of Raid on my tool belt.
It is suspected this is a bald-faced hornet’s nest, but until the mass is knocked down and an autopsy is performed, the identity is uncertain. — Photo by MARLISA KEYES
The place has been over run by the enemy: Pointy-bodied, foul-mouthed little devils that get their jollies out by rapid-fire stinging you while their buddies chew chunks from your butt.
My plan is wait for the sun to go down, shoot firs and then smack the crap out of them with a shovel.
As a longer than usual heat wave (90-degree days) continues here, the bees’ marauding counterparts have invaded our territory.
Each time I step into the yard to water the thirsty soil and its inhabitants, the crazy little pilots dive bomb me. Maybe they think they are defending their nests.
But I really doubt it.
I think they’re just MEAN.
Several days ago as thousands of vicious bald-faced hornets with inch-long teeth and pissed off yellow jackets wielding baseball bats whipped through my comfort zone, I went on a recon mission.
Ignoring the bullies hadn’t worked.
It was time to take action.
As I snuck around perimeter of the property, I discovered the trespassers had built nests in the eaves on both ends of the house, the garden shed and along the wood fence.
Unfortunately, we were unprepared to take action.
The only can of Raid the hubs found on the shelf didn’t have enough juice inside to shoot a slug, much less nests 25-feet off the ground.
And wearing myself out on my mission, I didn’t have the energy to track down my contacts to purchase new weapons.
The war would have to wait.
Well, it seems my inaction emboldened the marauders who invited their friends to join the party.
As the hubs did his own scouting mission in the yard last night, he spotted The Hornet Commander.
He’d hold up in a big, basketball size nest built from chewing the wood off our rustic cedar fence.
A fence, that given the size of the gray mass, shouldn’t be standing.
The hornets had built their home near the top of a quaking aspen tree that shades our hot tub and deck.
The hubs said he had visions of sliding into the tub and being attacked, Hunger Games style, by Tracker Jackers.
So we made a quick trip to Safeway to buy our weapons. OUR PLAN: Let the sun go down so the beasts would return to their lair, but attack while it was still light enough so we could see to get every last one of them.
Only Safeway was out of ammo.It seems the invasion is widespread across our community.Maybe even to Sagle.
We decided to go elsewhere.
Except we’re getting older and we kind of FORGOT what we were doing.
We went home.
And couldn’t find our arsenal.
After tearing apart the car and house, the hubs returned to the store looking for our “missing” bag of bug spray.
As he paused to ask the clerk if she had set the other bag aside, he remembered the empty shelf.
“Never mind,” he said.
That might explain the need for bee porn. OK. TMI>
First round to the hornets.
froghollowgardens 