Please Bee Gone

Bees and I don’t get along, let me re-phrase that, bees like me but I don’t like them. I tend to puff up like a blow fish and the sting site burns for nearly a week before the itching starts. I’m not allergic enough to carry epinephrine with me, but stings are painful for me. I must give off the right smell for them because they seem to hover around me for not particular reason.

In the woods just the other day, a yellow jacket kept landing on my elbow. I would think that would be the last place to find some juicy flesh to stick a barb into, yet several times throughout the day I would be shushing a buzzer away. And mosquitoes are the same way. A group of us could walk through a forest, a swamp or a desert and I would come away with reddened lumps while others go scot-free.

I noticed this paper wasp nest tucked into a wild hazelnut tree right next to the logging road. It was about the size of a soccer ball. Those pesky bees must have been working on the nest all of August and September to get it this big.

With the warm weather winding down the bees have been busy harvesting any fruit in the area by sucking out all the juice. They also chow down on any critter that happens to die near the woods. The bees that feast on flesh have a more potent sting with hotter venom that irritates longer than their vegetarian buddies.

Freezing weather will take care of these pests for me, I look forward to losing this nest so close to my travels.