A BEE STORY

YARD WORK IS NOT FOR SISSIES

She tried her best. The front garden looked well watered but in need of a major weeding and the backyard was well on its way to becoming a meadow and not a very pretty one. Our daughter tried her best to keep the weeds under control while we were gone but the weeds won out.
The weed invasion didn't seem to bother the bees. The wildness of the Russian sage was a feast of sweet nectar for the yellow jackets and honeybees. Not able to resist the need to weed after I got back to Madison from New York I changed into a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeve tee. I went searching for my goatskin gardening gloves and the little spade we keep hanging on a peg in the snug.  I pulled and dug out anything that didn't look as if it would ever flower. I'm no gardener, that's Rick's domain along with the kitchen.  In fact, gardening is one of those tasks I look at like cleaning out a clogged drain in the tub or changing a flat tire. By the time I finished weeding the front garden running the length our lawn I'd filled two thirty-three gallon lawn bags with the weeds and possibly legitimate plants I managed to either pull or dig out. I did all I could. The backyard was going to have to wait until the next day.

The backyard was much different than the front. Emmy had promised to help but she's not an early riser. Around ten after she had rolled out and found another pair of gloves we both went out to tackle the patio. Our back patio has a pea gravel surface laid on top of a plastic barrier that is supposed to keep the weeds out. Well it sort of works but after almost a complete summer of neglect it needed some serious attention.  Emmy and I filled another set of thirty-three gallon lawn debris bags. That meant I'd now accumulated four thirty-three gallon bags of lawn refuse and no real plan as to what to do with it.
The four thirty-three gallon black bags weren't going to fit in our trash can and I don't think you're supposed to put lawn and garden debris in the trash anyway. I did ask our neighbor and he agreed it wasn't a great idea. My civic duty and the fear the environmental police may catch me kicked in telling me I should put it all in the boot of our car and take it to the recycling station. Does anyone know how heavy a thirty-three gallon bag stuffed with weeds is? They're really heavy. I dragged the two bags from the backyard paving a lane of dead grass all the way to the driveway and dumped them next to the other two bags from the front yard.

That's when I spotted the two deteriorating bags Rick* had stashed next to our trash shed. These bags represented an unenthusiastic attempt at composting begun almost two years ago. I figured if I was willing to cart four hefty bags to the recycling center I could handle these two little decomposing bags as well. Rick was just going to have to give up in the compositing venture.
*EDITOR'S NOTE: This Rick guy seems to be a real piece of work!

I went back into the garage to pull out another thirty-three gallon bag to throw those composting bags into. They appeared to be decomposing too and they looked nasty. I picked up the first bag that oozed some black slim out of the holes in its bottom but I got it into the clean bag one handed while my other hand held my nose. Rotting refuse has a very unpleasant smell.
Then I went to pick up the second bag. Big mistake and I mean BIG mistake!  A swarm of bees said, "You aren't messing with us today" and the attack was on. I dropped the bag and started swatting and bringing back the Watusi as I jumped and flailed.
Those bees made me dance like it was 1976 at Studio 54. These bees were mad and they were ugly and they wanted a piece of me. You know you can't just brush them off once they've stuck their little venom filled stingers in you. You have to grab their furry bodies and pull them off with a twist. It's as painful as it sounds and just as disgusting.  Yet I have to give it to them; they're willing to die for the preservation of their hive.
After I recovered from the shock of my burning welts and moved sufficiently far enough to no longer be a threat to them I had to contemplate my next move.
Were these angry marauders honeybees and if they were was I willing to kill them? Who had ever heard of honeybees building a hive in a garbage bag? Honeybees are nearing extinction status. Would I be called a pollinator murderer if I brought out the Raid and poisoned them with chemicals? Could I forgive and forget and let them live in my rotting decomposing black trash bag I'd inadvertently left for them? What kind of slumlord would I be? The choice between murdered and slumlord seemed like a losing proposition in either direction.
Then it hit me. Down the street is a neighbor who raises honeybees. I'd never meet him or bought his honey but I figured Google wasn't going to come to my rescue. I walked down the street rubbing my arms where the burning was intensifying and knocked on his door. Mike had one of those signs in his front yard saying everyone was welcome in our neighborhood in English, Spanish and Arabic. I hoped it was a good sign, good enough that he'd more likely welcome me than shoot me.
It took a while for the door to swing open but when it did I started the conversation - rapid fire.
"I'm your neighbor. I live down the block. I was just weeding. I had four big black bags of weeds. Then there were bees, hundreds of them pouring out of a bag. I got stung. There were bees in a bag and they came after me. I got stung. They were mad. Are they honeybees? Should I kill them? Am I destroying the environment? What should I do? Do you sell your honey?"
"Lets have a look" and he gently pushed me aside, closed his door behind him and headed off in the direction I had indicated as the path back to my house.

When we got there he cavalierly sauntered right into the center of the swarm, closer than I could get without some liquid fear dripping down my leg, and assessed the situation.
"Let me get my gear and I'll be back"
"Okay" was about as much as I could muster as a response.
In fifteen minutes I could see him walking back pulling a wagon loaded with beekeeper's equipment. He had a machine the said would attract and capture a swarm of bees and a bag containing what looked like a HAZMAT suit.
There's so much to learn about bees and beekeeping. Mike does it for the joy of it. The money he makes from the sale of his honey barely allows him to break even. Only so many of his hives will survive a Wisconsin winter and replacing them costs upwards of a hundred and fifty dollars a swarm. The amazing fact to me was he buys new swarms off the internet. Kudos to the delivery people willing to pickup and carry boxes that buzz.

Mike donned his beekeeping outfit in the driveway. First pulling the white jump suit over his street clothes and securing the bottoms around his boots. Next he placed the pith helmet with a netting veil over his head and snapped it to the collar of the jump suit. The last thing was to slide his hands into the thick leather gIoves. This is when I became aware of the neighbors peeking through their securely locked windows at the spectacle that was taking place in my driveway. I feared they might be postulating I could be harboring radioactive materials in my garage requiring the city to bring in their hazardous materials team to clean up a dangerous mess.
The real task was for Mike to figure out if the hive was a honeybee hive or something else. The fact that these bees had taken to establish their home in a composting garbage bag made Mike think these intruders might be some other kind of bee. It would be the determining factor to whether he would try to capture them or kill them. There are 20,000 varieties of bees so the possibilities were high that this swarm might be something other than the kind of bees that were going to be honey makers. Turns out not all bees are pollinators.
Here's where the spectacle of bee identification became more of a spectator sport for the curious neighbors as Mike began a dance of swatting and trying to capture one of the bees A dead bee in the hand would be the best way for him to identify them as the good kind of bee or the bad kind. Once he crushed a lone drone he came over to me to show me the harmless little furry insect his stinger no longer a weapon to be feared.

"These bees aren't going to be producing any honey, they're ground nesting bees and they are not going to pollenate or save the planet." He went back into the angry swarm and pulled out a birthing comb from the bag of slime, along with a platoon of macho males trying one last attempt as saving their hive. I cowered. Mike did a victory laugh and asked me to get a couple more lawn bags.
After he had disposed of the rotting bags inside the clean bags he tied the bag shut as he issued his last directive, "Dump them in the trash, that should kill them then squirt a little Raid on the stragglers to finish off the rest".

Heroes come in many forms. Mine wore a funky suit making him appear both angelic and menacing. He loaded up his bee capturing gear onto his wagon and without taking off his suit rolled back home a vision that scared the bejesus out of all the little kids in the neighborhood who were sure we'd been invaded by aliens.