bright and beautiful creations: The Hippy Bees ~ Revisited

I've received quite a few (two) emails asking about the Hippy Bees? Did the Bee Whisperer kill them?

So I thought I would update everyone with the story of the bees and photos.

My bee whisperer showed up the day after he said he would, but this time instead of arriving on his white horse (big white truck) wearing his Knight in Shining Armor outfit (jeans and a tshirt), he came in his small politically correct green car (I don't mean the color green but the gas saving, energy saving, save the planet "green" car). And he wearing his Young Republican outfit, dress slacks, white shirt and a tie!

Ack! I was shocked, but then he smiled and all was right in my world once again. My muse was still...my muse!

We went into the backyard and he's checking out the hives and he can't believe how much bigger they are. He tells me he will be back around 8:30 or 9pm with a ladder, his Bee-Man suit and the poison because there is no way he can save them, the hive is just too big.

He comes back about 45 minutes later with a posse of Bee-men (ok, one - one bee man). His posse is an expert bee keeper and he comes out and says, "Yep, those are a whole lotta bees!" Don't you love experts? So they Ooh and aah at the bees and they decide it's going to take about three times of spraying the poison and then the tree trunk will have to be filled with some type of air foam that sprays out of a can and fills in big holes so that the bees won't come back. I'm all for it...I sure don't want them to come back.

So the Bee Whisperer comes back at about 8:30pm with his ladder and full Bee-man regalia and he asks me to turn the back door light on and go inside. I do, cause I really don't want to be anywhere near those bees when he irritates them.

I watch by the window and he keeps telling me not to come out...and I keep telling/yelling at him, "Don't worry...I won't". And he places the ladder on the tree and climbs up about 10 feet and starts to spray them.

And oh my gosh! Did those bees ever get mad, all of a sudden they fly towards the backdoor light where I am standing by the backdoor, safely inside and I can hear them buzzing. It sounds like a chain saw and the sky is filled with them.

My Bee Whisperer finishes his job, loads up his ladder takes off his suit and comes to the front of the house to the front door and advises me that it might be a good idea not to go out back tonight at all and maybe not tomorrow either and he will be back in a couple of days to spray them again.

So I kept an eye out to see what was going on, safely, through the window for the rest of the night until I went to bed. I could see tons of bees all over my back patio. I finally turned out the light and went to bed.

This is what I saw the next day. . .

A pile of dead bees near the trunk of the tree... click on the picture and it should enlarge.

You can see little bee carcasses all over the cement there by the tree trunk, they were like that all over the patio, you had to sweep them out of the way to get to the trunk.

The Bee Whisperer is definitely going to have to come back again, because even though those are a lot of bees on the ground there are still a bunch in the tree.

Here's a shot of before the Bee Killing . . .

And here's a shot of the hive today. As you can see there are a lot less bees, but there are still some there. More than likely the queen bee is still there and these bees that are left are there to protect her and won't leave.