Pandora’s Box or How I Released a Swarm of Angry Bees in My House
I had a real surprise today when I went to clean and refill the humming bird feeder. As I’ve done a number of times this summer I took the empty feeder down and brought it into the kitchen to disassemble it and clean it before I refilled it. As I opened the bottom part of the feeder a cloud shot up at me that I quickly realized was bees. The bottom of the feeder was full of bees and now I’ve released a swarm inside the house. I quickly jumped back to prevent me from getting a face full of them and the ones in the sink I quickly drowned before they got there senses and joined their friends buzzing around the kitchen and living room.
What a shocking surprise because in the 4 years or so we’ve had a hummingbird feeder I’ve never had anything like this happen. I’ve found the occasional dead one inside the feeder but never 15 – 20 live ones like today. Luckily I killed a number of them by drowning, the ones that were buzzing around had moved mostly into the living room. I turned the ceiling fan on high which made flying for them nearly impossible and then I killed them as they landed on the windows.
Needless to say I’ll not make that mistake again. Although it’s funny now at the time it wasn’t and I had to figure how to kill all these bees before my wife got home for lunch.
Gotta say, that doesn’t sound like much fun. Sounds like you kept your head though, and got rid of a lot of the bees right away. I probably would have started screeching and batting the bees away and would have ended up stung several times.
I’m not fond of bees.
Comment by Kristine Shreve — August 24, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Sounds like a near-nightmare. Once, when I was a kid living on Aldie Mountain, a bunch of bees got into our house. I walked in, sat down on the couch, put my arm on the windowsill and whammo! The bees were on the windowsill and tore my arm up!
My mom, my sister and I retreated to a back bedroom where we waited until my dad got home so he could dispatch the little devils.
Comment by Matt — August 25, 2007 @ 8:51 am
We had bees to make their home (rent free) on the back corner of our house a few years ago. I had to find a beekeeper to come and remove the queen bee and smoke them out. He had to tear out the eaves to get to them. He had to use a tall ladder since our home is high off the ground sitting on the side of a hill. It was a mess to say the least! Of course, we had to get that all repaired and re-painted. Our next door neighbors have carpenter bees and they just love to bore holes in their home! We just had our two back staircases replaced and was glad to find out that they will bore once into our stairs and die. I was told that whatever is in the treated lumber will kill them.
(I have 3 hummingbird feeders - I will be careful from now on after reading your post - glad you were not stung)
Comment by mariandeer — August 25, 2007 @ 11:28 am