aggienaut | Entries tagged with bee busters

It's time for another edition of Crazy People I Have to Deal With! It seemed popular last time so here we go again ;D

Pictured: me, not dealing with crazy people

So. I answer the phone for the Orange County Beekeeper's Association. People mostly call because they have bees in their yard they want someone to come remove immediately and they want it done for free; then there's a lot of bots that as soon as I pick up greet me with "please do not hang up the phone!" or "you will want to take this call!" and I really can't hang up fast enoug; and then there's the humans who call and want to speak to "the owner of your business or advertising manager" to which I try to invoke withering coldness in my voice as I inform them "this is not a business, this is the Orange County Beekeepers ASSOCIATION, we do not have an owner, and we do not take out advertising"; and very occasionally it's actually a person with a real reason to be calling us. Anyway, here's a particularly crazy lady who called me today:

Me: "Orange County Beekeeper's Association"
Her: "Hi this is ____ from the city of _____ and I have bees dying by the lamp in my back yard and we all know they can't see in the dark so how are they flying to my lamp and dying there? [five minutes of mostly completely irrelevant exposition before I can get a word in]"
Me: "The bees are flying to your light and getting dehydrated as they try to crawl on it and dying."
Her: "But how are they getting to the light? They can't see in the dark!"
Me: "Do you leave the light on at night?"
Her: "yes but it's completely dark all around"
Me: "Well that light is the only one they see so they fly to it"
Her: "but it's completely dark out"
[Me thinking: WTF is wrong with you?]
Me: "Well they can see that light from as far away as you can. If they have a line of sight they can see it a mile away. They fly to the light, they dehyrdate and die"
Her: "Well it never happened before"
Me: "You probably didn't have a bee colony located nearby before"
Her: "No that can't be it I've always had bees all over the flowers here"
Me: "That doesn't mean they lived there. They'll fly three miles to visit flowers."
Her: "No I think it's pesticides that are killing the bees"
Me: "Bees killed by pesticides would be dead all over, they would not be flying to your light to die"
Her: "No it's not the light"
Me: "The bee death you are observing is directly connected to the light, you can't argue that there's not a connection between the light and the dying bees."
Her: "I can't believe you don't care about the dying bees. I thought you would care about the bees dying" (!!!)(she is starting to sound very argumentative )
Me: "I do care about bee health but I'm telling you from my knowledge of bee behavior they fly to lights they can see at night and die under them. I get calls about it regularly, I see it at my own house, from my experience that clearly is what is going on here."
Her: "No it's definitely not the light"
...

Anyway, that's not even the half of it, and I remember it began with quite a bit of "the lamp is killing the bees" "no it's not" "yes it is" kind of back and forth. My coworker Jeremy was so amused by the whole thing he actually started videoing me on his camera-phone. I think it ended with her saying she was going to call someone else, in a huff.

But then this came in the mail today so I guess it's not entirely thankless ;)

And this afternoon I helped someone move a colony of bees from his composter into a hive box we provided him (sold him at cost). The bees were a super gentle exposed colony which had been in the composter about a month, just lightly smoked them and didn't have to suit up at all. The guy was really excited about it. Its fun things like this that make up for the crazy people.

But lest you start thinking I'm too nice, here's one more picture from today:

My coworker hates pickles and onions (?!?!) but loves altoids, and asked me to get her "both" flavors of altoids when I said I was stopping by 7-11. It's also a running joke that I always get her order wrong if I go pick up lunch, so I had to use my creativity to get this "order" wrong.

Disclaimer: to all you trolls who are just waiting to tell me not to "feed the trolls" again, I consider you to be trolls.

   Christie felt the salty wind on her face and she was excited. She was on a pirate ship! And soon there would be a battle. The deck vibrated under her feet as the vessel motored out to one end of a large t-shaped inlet.
   "Ladies and gentlemen, could I have your attention please?" a crewmember with bushy red muttonchops was standing on the bench in the middle of the deck addressing the assembled passengers.
   "In a moment we'll shut off the engine and set sail, to do battle with those villianous rogues on the Lady Washington over there!" and he pointed at the similarly piratey looking ship at the other end of the inlet. There's not much wind today so we're probably going to have to set everything we've got..." he continued to explain something about lifejackets and introduce the crew, but Christie was too busy taking in all the exciting sights around her. Finally he finished, and the captain, a big fellow with a huge red beard that could have belonged to a dwarf in Lord of the Rings, hollered out a series of commands. As the crewmembers swarmed up the lattice-like grid of ropes that formed a ladder up the mast, the captain switched off the engine. She hadn't noticed how loud it had been until it was off, but suddenly the deck was no longer vibrating and there was just the sound of waves lapping at the side. The crisp salty wind she'd felt against her face abruptly stopped as well, and she realized she'd only felt wind because of the vessel's forward motion.
   She craned her neck back to see the sailors high above. They swiftly ascended the mast on one side and then, where the yardarms formed a t, they crossed over to the other side to loose the sails. Finally, after much running about and hauling on an overwhelming number of lines, they had all the sails set. But there was still no wind, and the boat still wasn't moving.
   Passengers looked at each other and grumbled, why aren't we moving? This is not how it looked in the pirate movies!
   "Ladies and gentlemen!" the crewmember was addressing the passengers again, "We are now prepared to travel the way most of the world was explored, at the speed of smell!" There was a moment before there was some laughing as people got the joke.
   "Now we've evidently got a little time ahead of us, so let me explain what we're going to aim to do. In the movies the ships just line up and fire away into their side, right? But the sides are the strongest part of the vessel and when you're doing that you're getting it right back from them, so what you want to do is what's called crossing the T, where you cross either in front of or behind the opposing vessel. That way you can fire your entire broadside and they can only fire the few guns they might have facing forward or aft. In addition, your shots will roll down their entire deck, having ample opportunity to hit and destroy things and thus make them sad. And if you're firing at the back of their vessel that is the very best because the stern is the weakest part and you might knock out their rudder or their captain."
   Christie looked out at the other vessel, similarly bobbing motionless with all sails set. This could take awhile.
   "Naval battles would often take hours or even days" the crewmember explained helpfully.

   The gunner, a blonde red-faced fellow introduced as "Pony," explained how he fired the four guns (two per side), which he insisted were never to be called cannons. Then the captain called out for the crew to "set stunsels!" and crewmembers ran aloft again. They pushed poles out further on the ends of the yards, increasing the length of the crossbar of the t, and then set additional sails on them, outside the main big square sails.
   Meanwhile someone pointed out that the other ship appeared to be rowing now -- they'd pushed two oars out on each side, which a crewmember referred to as sweeps, and were trying to row themselves, but given the size of the ship, the four oars weren't making much progress.
   The captain stroked his beard and looked thoughtfully at the sails while the passengers and crew began to chat with each other. A good-looking crewmember had just started to talk to Christie, with a devilish twinkle in his eye, when the captain burst out "Kirby! You and Crazy Ivan and Knuckles lower the smallboat!" and the crewmember quickly excused himself and ran off to the rowboat hanging in davits off the stern. They rowed the little rowboat to the front of their ship and threw a line up, which was secured to a post and then they tried to tow the ship, though they didn't appear to be making much more progress than the other ship.

   Presently, something splashed in the water off to the side, followed a minute later by a second splash. Curious onlookers peered at the other vessel, about a hundred yards away by now, and then they saw that on deck they had a giant slingshot. Two people held either side while a third pulled it back with the projectile. Examination of the floating projectiles revealed that it was leftover biscuits from breakfast that were being fired!
   "Rig the attack bubbles!" called out the captain in as fierce a voice as one can say such a thing. A crewmember ran aloft with a bottle and bubble-blowing utensil. From a position up on the mast, perched on a yardarm, he blew large bubbles which floated slowly towards the other vessel.
   "Pull us around to starboard!" the captain called down to the rowboat, and the sweating rowers started trying to pull the nose of the ship to the right.
   "Ahahahaha we have you now!!" a crewmember called out to the hapless other vessel, which was still pointed towards them and less able to turn with their inadequate sweeps.
   "Okay, everyone on deck, we need you all to help," the captain addressed everyone. "I need you all to run in a counter-clockwise circle around the deck." Everyone stared at him blankly. "As you run you'll be pushing the ship with your feet towards turning clockwise" he explained. "Now go!" Laughingly, everyone began to run in a circle.
   "Okay, okay, avast the running and clear the gun deck!!" the captain called out. Christie had been so caught up in the fun of the ridiculous run around the deck that she was surprised to realize they very nearly were broadside to the other ship now. The other ship was also attempting to turn, so unfortunately, it wouldn't be a clean shot down its length, but they still couldn't get all their guns to bear.
   "Kris, help Pony get all the guns on the port side," the captain ordered, and the crewmember with the muttonchops helped the gunner detach a gun carriage from where lines held it on one side and they pushed it slowly, both straining with its weight, to the other side. Then they did it with the second gun from that side until all four guns were on the side facing the other ship.
   "Fire as she bears!!"
   In rapid succession, the gunner used a stick with a smouldering piece of linen on the end to touch off the touch-hole of each gun, which caused each gun to go off with a deafening boom and cloud of sulfurous-smelling smoke.

   The other ship came around and fired its gun with a faraway bang. "That's a nice ketch!" one of their crewmembers yelled, making "ketch" sound like "catch," a crewmember near Christie made a disgusted face, and said "he makes that same joke every single day. Our ship is a ketch you see, but that's no excuse to use the same joke every single day."
   "You have tiny baggywrinkles!!" he called back to the other ship. "Those fuzzy things on the line are called baggywrinkles," he turned and explained to Christie. "They prevent chafing. You can see theirs are quite small compared to our big, manly, baggywrinkles."

   A few more shots were exchanged as well as many more obscure pun-based insults, and then it was time for the crew to scramble aloft and take the sails back down.

   As they motored back across the bay, Christie reflected that even though there hadn't been any wind and they hadn't moved fast, it had been fun seeing the creative ways the sailors came up with to try to move their ship.
   "Gunner, load one more gun!" the captain called to Pony, who was just crossing the deck with tea.
   "What, why?" he started to ask, and the captain pointed to a large ferry coming down the bay. The Puget Sound ferries dwarf the tallships, and look like giant whalefish with open mouths as they have a large cavity going from front to back, which is the car deck.
   "Maple Syrup is headed home on that ferry, and we should demonstrate a good example of crossing the T anyway." the captain said with a grin.
   "Aye aye, captain!" Pony enthusiastically responded and started reloading powder into one of the guns (they'd been returned to their original sides). Under engine power the ship easily manoeuvered to cross well in front of the unsuspecting ferry.
   "Fire as she bears!"
   Pony waited until the ferry was perfectly aligned, daylight clearly visible out the other side of the gaping mouth. "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he called out as he touched off the gun.
   There was a boom, and swirling grey smoke, followed quickly by a hollow rumbling echo ... and then a half dozen car alarms went off. The crew and passengers cheered loudly.

***

Crossing the T bonus entry: in 2009 I wrote this hand-written entry on hand-writing which totally could have also served this topic.

Anyway, this entry is based on true events. From http://emo-snal.livejournal.com/2010/04/ through http://emo-snal.livejournal.com/2010/10/ I was a crewmember of the tallship Hawaiian Chieftain.

   Yesterday I rescued a swarm that had been four or five days in a purple leaved tree in front of a house down in San Clemente.
   Just after that I was headed back north when my boss called (interesting side note, I set the contact photo for him on my phone as the eye of souron, so you must picture that displaying on my phone whenever he calls me) telling me to stand by down there. I happened to be driving past the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano at that moment, and I'd been meaning to stop in and see how the hive I'd helped them set up was, so I did so. I went through the hive and unfortunately it wasn't doing as well as I would like. I was just saying that I'd combine it with another hive if they had one but they don't ... when I realized I had bees on my truck!!

   So I turned the lid upside down and dumped the bees on it. It took awhile to find the queen but I had time. I found her twice but both times she evaded my attempts to grab her by a wing. It wasn't until the eye of souron called me back and told me to return to the office that I saw her one more time as I lifted the lid, and successfully nabbed her (thus enabling me to add these bees to the existing hive without introducing a second queen, which might lead to the death of their marked bred queen). During this process though I had noted that her daughters were all extremely docile and, while even africanized bees might be docile in a swarm, they were also not at all crawly, a better sign that these bees might not be very africanized. So I kept the queen and hoped I'd find a use for her.

Today
   This morning I had a call down at Doheny State Beach. Once I got there I learned that they've been going with some "bee saver" because they don't want to kill any bees, and, you know, my company is the big bad company that kills bees.
   Well it turns out their "bee saver" had been out last week to "save" some bees, by which they mean they sealed the hole in the cinderblock wall in which the bees were living, so the bees could slowly die inside. But they still had a lot of bees clustered on the outside, which would just wait to slowly die there, as well as another cluster of bees which I suppose were also displaced refugee bees, that had clustered on a maintenance cart. They'd called their usual "bee saver" but he was busy or they couldn't get ahold of him so they had to resort to the big bad man: me.

   Anyway, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that simply entombing bees by sealing their entrance neither saves them nor is it by any means the most humane way of putting them down. My company gets a lot of flack because we don't save all the bees, but the sad fact is I'm pretty sure all the "bee savers" are pulling shenanigans like this when they can't be bothered to deconstruct a cinder block wall to get the bees out. The difference between us and them is that we don't lie to people, and when we have to put bees down we do it effectively and humanely.
   Anyway, so there's this cluster of bees on a cart without a queen. And what do I have? I happen to have a queen in my truck that I'd like set up with some bees!! So I put her in the container in the bee vac and then vacuum up the rest of the cluster.

   At the end of the day today I inserted the queen cage (she's still doing alright in there) into a hive box with the rest of her new bees. Its still plugged with steel wool (I didn't have any candy on me this time), but I'll go back there in two or three days and let her out, by then they should all feel at home and like family.

   Unrelated to the above chain of events, I showed up at another call today where the guy informed me "three bees went into my vent, and I think one is still in there," and I successfully kept a straight face. If he wants to throw $150 at me for three bees that's his business. These girls are worth their weight in gold*!

(actually I just looked it up, those three bees are worth ten times the value of gold)

   As a sort of epilogue on that last story, about the ogre neighbors who were obstructing my attempts to help a nice old man, apparently they called the next day to say they did not consent to the bee colony being removed from their shed wall. I should have just done it, they'd never see it on that side anyway.

   Now, hives come in a wide variety of temperaments, around here. I mentioned the lovely bees in a beehive earlier which I relocated to my own yard. The day after the events of the last entry, which I think makes it Wednesday, I had another birdhouse full of bees. This was a friggen huge birdhouse full of bees. I was looking forward to another easy collection of some bees.
   When I went to go look at them the first time several stung me though, so I came back with the full suit, and as soon as I started trying to put screen over the entrance I was in a veritable blizzard of bees trying to sting me. This is the kind of bees you don't want to keep and you don't want contributing to your local gene pool.
   Now, some of our competitors insist they save "all the bees," and on any account it wouldn't actually be legal for them to kill bees as they don't have pest control licenses; but this is where I can and do and think anyone that would insist on saving really aggressive hives of bees is nuts. So I gassed them and took the bird house.
   But wait, there IS a happy ending! I still had those bees from the mailbox because I hadn't had time to shake them in to anything yet ... so at the end of the day I got home and put this big beautiful birdhouse up on the hill (sorry I don't have a good picture of it yet), and shook the postal bees into it! I guess I'll have to call it the post office or something.

   Thursday I had another swarm I didn't feel bad about killing -- I arrived at the exact moment the swarm did, which was kind of crazy timing. The guy, who was pretty cool, a captain in the naval reserves (we talked maritime stuff for a bit), had called about the "heavy scouting" that preceded the swarm, evidently, but as I showed up this huge cloud of bees was just approaching and zeroing in on one of his vents. Normally you can stand right in the middle of such a cloud of bees and be confident you won't get a single sting, but they were stinging me!! That was crazy. I knocked them right out of the gene pool I tell you what.

   Today (Friday) though, I have another happy example for you. What turned out to be my last call of the day, around maybe 3:30, was a big swarm on the fence streetside of a school. Bigness is an indication of a lesser degree of africanization, because the africanized bees tend to make many small swarms, so it had that in its favor, and when I walked over to look at it, I don't know, from a million subtleties of behavior I can just tell when I'm looking at nice bees. A bystander asked me one of the typical "aren't you gonna suit up?" questions, and partly to demonstrate their docility, and partly to test it myself, I put a finger right through the middle of the mass of bees. No stings, nice bees.
   So I get out the live capture vacuum and vacuum them up.
   As I'm just putting the last of the equipment back on the truck a guy parks behind me and comes up, asking if I'm gonna sell the bees.
   "Nah, if someone wants to buy bees they ought to get good bred bees from a beekeeper" is my response.
   He asks a few more questions and I realize he is in fact a beekeeper. "Do you ever go to that bee club?" he asks, "the one that had that speaker from Africa?"
   "I AM that speaker from Africa!!" I exclaim.
   Anyway, if he's a beekeeper that changes things. "I won't sell you these bees" I say, "but I'll give them to you."

   I call the office and they say I don't have any jobs lined up after this one (though that could always change at any moment), so I follow the guy to where his storage unit is a few miles away. He's retired, sparse white hair but very able-bodied, friendly face. We rustle up his beekeeping equipment (he'd had one hive but it had eventually failed), and well, then this happens:

And, well, I ended up spending an hour there playing with the bees / making sure they got well situated. Eventually found the queen and put her in.

Seen here we've purposely propped up the lid with some sticks to aid the rest of the bees in climbing in, Virgil said he'll go back later and remove them for the proper tight fit.

I was just having fun playing with bees at the end of a nice day and talking about bees with someone who was interested in them, but then to top it all off he tipped me $100!! O:

AND I was able to meet up for lunch today with the lovely >Anna Banana pineapple coconuts. So today was pretty much an A+ day.

Well people seemed to like my story about the other day so how about another daily adventure.

This one involves some people behaving like ogres.

I started at 0730 in the city of Orange, and from there I was sort of all over the place, but mainly in north county. Meanwhile, down in the office someone from the German national radio station ARD came by to inteview Dave (boss). Two weeks ago a German documentary crew had come by.. I guess we're "Big in Germany" ... like David Hassellhoff ;D

Anyway the highlight of the morning calls was when a homeowner tipped me this hatfull of tangerines from their tree:

This image hosted by instagram, which I'm not experimenting with. Hopefully the link stays functional.

And then I had this call up in Brea, the very northern end of our territory, practically in Los Angeles County (ie the edge of the world). The very nice old fella had bees in his back fence. But first I got thoroughly distracted by his sweet model ships!!

That is a sweet ship!!

   Anyway it turns out the back fence where these bees were was not a fence at all. High back-to-back neighbors had a shed the wall of which was the property line. The outer wall of the shed was decaying, though the inner looked intact -- looked like it would be no problem to remove just enough of the outer planking to remove the beehive. Just had to go talk to them.
   So I drove around to their side, and knocked on their doors. Almost immediately a cacophony of yapping dogs erupted from inside the house. Eventually an ogrish girl who may have been anywhere from 16-21 appeared behind the screen door and shouted "WHAT DO YOU WANT??" over the yapping dogs.
   "UH... THERE'S ... THIS BEEHIVE! IN YOUR SHED!!" I tried to explain over the din.
   "YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL MY MOM GETS HERE AT FOUR THIRTY!" she told me.
   "ALL I NEED IS YOUR PERMISSION TO CUT INTO THE OUTER WALL OF THE SHED" I explained.
   "I CAN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING UNTIL MY MOM GETS HERE, COME BACK AT FOUR THIRTY!" she said again. I said okay and goodbye and beat a retreat from that infernal din.
   I know there's a lot of dog lovers on here, and I've met many a very sweet dog, but I really really can't understand what's appealing about living with the kind of yapping hellbeasts that make such an abominable racket like this.
   Anyway, so I returned to the nice old fella and told him I'd have to come back at four thirty (it was around noonish).

   So then I went about my day, which involved these bees on a mailbox:

"you've got mail!"

   Which I'll have to know I removed live. When I informed the homeowner of this she said "well that makes me happy I guess, I don't know why, but it does."

   Went about my day and returned to the call in Brea just after 4:30. Took some pictures of it so I'd have a visual aid for the neighbors and then drove around to their side. On their door I find a sign, which I took a picture of but for some reason it's not transferring off my camera as an image anything else can process, so alas you won't get the full effect.
   But it read:

Do NOT KNOCK
DAY SLEEPER

Bee exterminator: please leave your number and we will call you, thank you.

   So after I rearranged my day, including trading jobs with other technicians, so I would be free to do this job at 4:30, after I drove up to the far corner of our territory (for the SECOND TIME) in the very middle of rush hour traffic, which would also cause me to be working late ... they want me to just leave me number so they can call me whenever they feel like it? And when does someone who gets off work at 4:30 have time to be sound asleep almost immediately and be a day sleeper? Getting home from work at 4:30 sounds to me more like normal person schedule.
   I heard someone walking around in there but I didn't want to arose their wroth by knocking againts their very specific instructions so I tried tapping insistently on the window but they ignored it. I left my card and couldn't resist noting on the back that I'd just driven through rush hour traffic from the other end of the county specifically because I was told they could meet me at this time.

   Went back over and killed the bees.. we'll have to remove them later I guess. It was tempting to just remove them anyway, I could have pulled those rotten planks off with my hands, but probably best not to mess with these obviously ill-behaved neighbors.

   As I was leaving I drove past the ogre neighbors house again -- they had taken down the sign and my card... but hadn't called me. Yeah do they take signs off their door in their sleep?

   In conclusion these people were being colossal assholes to me for no reason at all. Ugh.

I. The Daily Story
   Once upon a time, about 13 years ago now, I started emosnail with the credo of "every day has a story, and I intend to tell it." And back then I did update just about every single day.

   13 years later here we are at emo_snal, we've lost an i, and updates are few and far between -- typically only when something really exciting happens and sometimes not even then (I swear one of these days I'll update on the exciting conclusion of the end of the last Turkey trip), but every update is a production now, not something to whip off in twenty minutes about the day's excitement.

   I do rather miss those good ole days though, and would like to get back to finding the story in every day and examining it. I'm sure that won't get around to happening, but I'll tell you about the latest bee-ventures.

II. First, on being an insecticidal maniac
   We've finally started doing live removals, AKA "bee rescues," at work. It's all kind of ironic, because you see, we love bees, my boss and I. We are as dedicated to and as knowledgeable about the trials and tribulations of the local bee population as anyone you could find short of one of the professional bee PhDs in the ivory tower. Yes, we kill bees, a lot of bees, and we get a lot of flak for that, but that's because the feral Africanized bees of unknown hygiene that people get in their walls are really of no value to the greater bee population and damaging to the beekeeping community. But drowning in a rising tide of consumers that veritably demand it, we've begun doing live removals.

   As a lover of bees, one has to kind of harden ones heart to the kind of killing we do. It's just business, you don't think about it. I'd kill bees all day and then come home and rescue a single bee from the pool, or a coworker would ask me to squash a single bee on a window and, after killing thousands, the personal-ness of squashing an individual would still repulse me.
   There was only one call I can recall really feeling guilty over. It was a feral colony under someone's jacuzzi and after I'd pulled off their outer wall and sprayed them with gas there was still not a single bee angry or trying to sting me. They were obviously very friendly bees, which, more than provoking mere sentimentality, had me thinking "I really want to use these bees as breeding stock!!!! I want their genetics!!" They would have been of real value to the world. But alas I had already gassed them and that was right before we officially began doing live removals.

   And to go off on a little bit (more) of a tangent, all our competitors are saying they're doing live removals, and they have pictures and videos on their websites purportedly showing them doing so, but not a single picture or video of them doing beekeeping or even delivering bees to a beekeeper (you'd think at least once they'd want to take a picture of the bee yard they delivered them to, wouldn't you?). My boss even called some of them pretending to be a random person looking to buy some honey and they of course didn't have any or have a beekeeper to recommend calling, a sure sign that they are not actually in contact with any beekeepers. In conclusion, its not that we're the only ones cold-hearted enough to kill bees, we're just the only ones who are honest about what we do!!

III. In the End, Only Kindness Matters

   Last Thursday I had a call for a requested live removal of a birdhouse full of bees (which is not a terribly uncommon place for them to inhabit). First I approached them bees without any protective gear on, which is my usual tactic to ascertain just how defensive the bees are going to be. Expected results range from bees becoming angry and possibly stinging me as soon as I'm nearby, to a bee or two starting to buzz angrily (to me the difference between an angry buzz and normal buzzing is plain as day) after I've stood next to them a minute or two. From this information I know whether I'm going to need the hot uncomfortable full suit or less, and if I can permit the homeowner to watch from a distance or will have to make sure there's no one outside anywhere nearby. In the case of this birdhouse I was able to get nose to nose with the hive entrance and for as long as I stood there no bees became angry.
   The homeowner even became brave, and encouraged by my ability to remain next to the bees unmolested, they approached it, but then to demonstrate that they believed the hive was not fastened down and could be easily removed, they gently jiggled it.
   Its funny the obscure things you take for-granted, I knew these bees to be very docile, but I was mortified that she'd jiggle the hive like that! The buzzing of the hive revved up to a veritable roar. But still it wasn't an angry roar -- we watched as bees came flooding out and began to whirl around in front of it.
   "I do believe they're sending out a swarm right now!!" I exclaimed. Sure enough, I even saw a queen bee emerge from the hive, which wouldn't happen for any other reason.
   Anyway, I let that swarm settle and vacuumed it up with the low-powered live capture vacuum, which really does seem to get them with zero casualties, and I lit the smoker and smoked the birdhouse --just to cover my bases, for they hardly seemed to need it-- and was able to tape some screen over the entrances, still without a single bee getting mad, and carry it to my truck. These bees were seriously unbelievably gentle.
   I was incredibly glad to have these delightful bees alive. I called my boss and informed him I wouldn't be taking them to the company bee yard -- I was taking these ones straight to MY house! I got home and, cradling the little birdhouse full of bees in my arms, took it a short way up the hill in the backyard and placed it on a chair up there. In all the times I've gone up there to look at it I have still not seen or heard a single angry bee.

IV. The Second Swarm
   Returning from work Friday evening I found they had sent out ANOTHER swarm, which had landed on a nearby patio beam. While the swarm was very small, its still kind of amazing that this already-very-small hive has sent out two swarms since I've known it.
   Swarms are "supposed" to be very docile, but I've found most swarms in this area will sting you just for looking at them. This one however I was able to play around with, sticking my finger all the way in to the solid mass of bees and other things, without getting stung. I didn't have a beehive to put the swarm in though, and didn't want to shake them in to some random box and then again into a beehive, so I decided to wait until I had a chance to go back to work and get a hive box.
   All that evening, while I was out at the bar with my coworker/shipmate Russell and some friends that are staff at the Ocean Institute (that owns the Brig Pilgrim) I was worrying about those bees. What if they don't have enough collective body mass to stay warm all night? Should I have put them in a box so they could stay warm? When I got home at 1am I went out there and felt the outside of swarm, the outer bees felt fairly cool. But then again none were buzzing -- if they were TOO cold they would buzz to generate heat. It wasn't a terribly cold night anyway, probably upper 50s, which is a survivable body temperature for bees.
   The next morning (this morning, Saturday morning), I had to go do my volunteering thing on the boat in the morning. After lunch I rushed home to make sure the swarm was still there, it was. I went to work and got a hive box. I came home with the box and placed it under where the swarm was hanging...
   At that EXACT MOMENT I heard their buzzing rev up to full throttle. Now, I hadn't jostled them or anything, there's no way I could have triggered this. Just a crazy coincidence, that after two days of hanging there, the exact moment I put a hive under them to move them into they all took off and flew off over some neighboring shrubbery and out of sight.

   Oh well, I would have really liked to have that swarm in a hive, but I still have the original in the bird house. But I can't open up the bird house and see how they're doing in there like I could have done with bees in a hive box. Maybe they'll send out another swarm soon though...

So I'm back working at Bee Busters. And of course as soon as I started working there I started (finally) getting calls from other places wanting me to come in for an interview. But anyway, the above is the Newport Back Bay, view from where I was standing by between calls in the morning. Pictures in this entry are all from my phone, so I apologize for the poor quality.

Scene I - The Job
   This afternoon I responded to a call about bees at an apartment building in Fullerton (NE Orange County). I arrive and find the described location to find that it appears to be bees scouting the vent, that is, investigating it as a potential place for a swarm to move in to. I'm a bit disappointed because all I can really do here, since I can't block up the vent, is spray Wasp Freeze(tm) on it, a pesticide that has an odor that is particularly repellant to all hymenopterids ... though it would probably decay in the sun within 24 hours and then there'd be nothign stopping bees from moving in.
   Two maintenance guys are looking at it with me and asking me some of the usual basic questions. Then they walk away. Moments later they're hollering. "Hey bro! Over here!!" I do my quick wasp spray treatment and go around the building to where they are. A huge buzzing noise fills the air as I come around the corner. There is a swarm in the very act of moving into a vent on that side -- probably the same swarm that had been scouting the other vent!
   I quickly set up a ladder (its like, 12 ft up), and the shopvac. I spray some hand held pesticide in the vent with the vacuum ready, and sure enough they all come flooding out right into my waiting vacuum.
   Now of course a fair number escape past the vacuum. Presently I see some grouped up near the ground the way they group around a queen. Closer examination reveals the queen is in fact there. I try to grab her but she flies off before I get there. I go back about my business but keep an eye out for her and soon I see her on the wall again. I try to grab her with the gloves on but they're too cumbersom, so I take them off and am able to grab her gently between my fingers. I put her in a ziplock bag in the cab of my truck and go back to the job.

   Then I didn't have a call after so I went to stand by from the nearby Fullerton Arboretum:

Scene II - Bees in Birdhouses
   There used to be a feral colony under a log on the hill behind my house. One day I had a call for bees in a birdhouse. It was a pretty birdhouse. It would make a good home for some bees. So instead of throwing it away I put it on top of the feral colony in the yard. Eventually the bees moved up into it.
   Last week when I came back to bee busters the truck I inherited had a birdhouse full of bees on it. The entrance was stuffed with steel wool but there was still a fair number of bees all over it. I suspected there were still a lot of live bees in it. At the end of the day I put it up on the hill next to the other one and pulled the wool out. I figured it was probably dead but maybe some future bees would move in. When I checked on it a few days later it had steady flight in and out the front, like it was totally a going affair!

Scene III - A Home For Beeatrix.
   Arriving home from work, despite rather having to go to the bathroom, the first thing I did was put a dab of honey on my finger and go outside to let the queen bee (whom we'll call Queen Beeatrix, for the sake of being whimsical) out of the bag. I put my finger in front of her and she walked up to the honey and started lapping it up hungrily. Once she'd had her fill she took a few steps away. In the below picture you can even still see the honey residue on my pointer finger.

   What now? I've tried a few experiments to see if I could keep a queen bee alive without any help from worker bees but unfortunately she usually died after 24-48 hours. Wasn't particularly feeling like trying that again right now.
   If you introduce a queen into an existing hive with a queen in it they'll "ball" around the new queen and kill her. But operating on the assumption that someone HAD gassed the new birdhouse hive, the queen could be dead. Without opening it up I can't really determine. Its kind of a wild chance, but I figured, well, she'll definitely die in any other course of action. Maybe I'll go put her in front of the hive and see if they seem intent on being sweet or mean to her.
   So I go up the hill to the hives, and put my hand with her on it right in front of the entrance. Immediately several bees walked out on to my hand and started inspecting her.

The first birdhouse has tipped over, and I figure righting it would probably upset them now. That brown thing on top/front of it is a "beard" of bees overflowing out. They'll probably swarm soon. Also this is not only a phone pic but it was awkwardly taken with my left hand, so cut me some slack ;-D

   The neighbours three rat-like little dogs came to the fence and interrupted my peaceful bee moment with frenzied yipping at me, which continued the entire time I was there. Ugh. Bees are so much more peaceful than annoying little rat-dogs.
   Anyway more bees came out and groomed her, but I was afraid maybe they were just trying to figure out who she was and would turn on her. She didn't make any movement towards the hive entrance. I sat tehre for about ten minutes, arm getting tired, still having to go to the bathroom, while the bees crawled around on my hand getting to know the queen. And the dogs yipped.
   I moved my hand so she was just outside the entrance and finally they began escorting her in.

   She's hard to make out in the above picture but she's just crossing the lip of the entrance. I hung around for another several minutes to make sure they didn't seem to become agitated or kick her right out, something they very well could do. Also contemplating how nice a peaceful bees can be -- these are not domesticated colonies. These are wild caught swarms that really have no reason to be nice to me, but I was having a nice peaceful 15 minute sit right in front of them with them using my hand as a porch. Much more pleasant creatures than those god damn yipping dogs next door d:

   (Still though, I must say, don't try this at home!)

   Then I had to go to the bathroom. But I came back one more time to make sure everything still seemed to be in order and it did. And everyone lived happily ever after. (:

Just another day at work. Ryan balances precariously on a chimney cap over three stories in the air to unscrew it to get at the bees inside.

Other recent pictures from work:

This parking meter is temporarily out of order

and

Sea bees

(:

   Had my last day of work at the Bee Caves today, at least for another six months or so. About ten hours from now I pick up whirled from the airport. (:

The Other End of Hiring
   I wear a wide variety of hats at work, and today it was the Human Resources Hat. We're starting to get into the busy season so it's time to hire some assistant technicians for the bee control business (and ideally someone competent enough to be trained at beekeeping as well).

   I posted a job on craigslist the other day, intentionally vague as per Dave's instructions, for "Field Technician." Within an hour we had 40 applicants, 24 hours later we had 107.

   I sifting through these today to identify the ones worth following through with. It was interesting to be on the other side of hiring, being as, like most people, I've been on the applicant side much much more.

   Looking through the apps, there were lots and lots of electricians for some reason. Also, I always felt kind of sad to see people in the apps who were in their fifties and seemed like they were clearly qualified to be doing something that pays better and is less labour intensive.

   With so many applicants I didn't have time to give them much of a look, so had to find ways to rapidly skim through them.
   People who just attached a resume with no comment I'm not taking the time to open the document and investigate. A few people just emailed asking "I'm interested in this job how do I apply?" Uhh you just DO, dumbass. You think I have time to ask you to do the obvious?
   While the job doesn't require exquisite writing ability, the way I see it if they can't string together a few error free sentences to try to impress me, they are not someone I'd trust to do anything well.
   Had SEVERAL applications for male applicants coming from female named email addresses. This makes me picture some lardass sitting on his couch while his fed up girlfriend/wife says "I'm tired of you sitting on your ass all day I'm going to apply you to some jobs!!"
   A few had their job objective as "to use my skills as an electrician..." or "use my skills as a forklift driver..." or such. Sure write something specific that fits what you're applying to... but make sure you change it before you use that same app for somewhere else!!! Doesn't impress me very much that I know you really want to be a forklift (he seemed very qualified to drive forklifts though)
   One applicant mentioned he had several years of pest control experience, mentioned having the licenses our guys have, and even mentioned specifically that he had experience with bee calls ... needless to say we're definitely not hiring him. Yep. I asked the guys if he was one to follow up on and they all said no in unison. People who already learned somewhere else come in thinking they know how to run the place and give everyone a headache. We'd rather train our own people.

   As to who I did move to the "follow up on" pile, the magic words were "likes hard work" "totally fine with long hours" and "not afraid to get dirty." The "high score" if you will:

Labor intensive? Weekend shifts? Extended hours? This is exactly what I've been looking for! I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty and would enjoy some actual work as opposed to a desk job tucked away in some office. If what you posted was true, I'm excited!

I'm a hard worker looking for a job.

   By and large people who go on about how perfect they are for this position (which I had givin them no information about mind you) and how they'll be the best thing for the company kind of turned me off, but things like the above, that's what I like to see.

   So we made a pile of a dozen or so to email to come to inteview. Before we do that though there are two we emailed immediately and will interview before even contacting the other ones.
   These two are the two former marines who applied.

One is supposed to adjust the curves so the black on that label that I know is actually very black looks as black as it should in the picture right? I don't actually know how to do that.

And it's not even 9am monday morning yet and...

This morning Professor Pelliteri of U of Wisconsin got back to me that earwigs will probably eat the small pests of beehives (varroa mites and hive beetles), which is cool ... and potentially revolutionary if we can make extensive use of this. More field research will be necessary (:

AND

I'm now working on a patent application for the beevac! Boss says he'll share joint credit with me on the patent.. so I might have a patent in my name soon!! :D

A particularly dashing young chap holding a jar overflowing with bees. He is not wearing protective clothing and there are a few bees crawling on his face

   "Bees in a jar??"
   "Yep, some film crew called and they want us to put bees in a jar"

   I didn't know then why they wanted to put bees in a jar, and, frankly, after having seen the shoot, I still don't know what the hell bees in a jar had to do with anything, but hey.

   They had already called some other beekeeper, earlier, who did bring them a box o bees, but had no idea how to get them in a jar and eventually left without doing so, leaving this production staff member with a box o bees in his apartment.

   But, then they called us, which was a good move on their part, because there's nothing we can't do with bees. Jar o bees? When and where!

   When Wallstreet Journal wanted to do a story about "Bees on a Plane," they came to us. When National Geographic wanted to do a story on "Killer Bees," they came to us (for Nat'l Geo they actually covered my face in bees).

   It also so happens that we're always inventing things. The bee control side of our business was among the first in the industry to use hand held laser thermometers to find colonies inside walls by the temperature spike, as well as several other devices and chemicals. I've posted a few times about various things I happen to be researching that day (most recently, for example, new biological control methods vs ants, & the finer points of earwig biology). The astute reader may also recall I've made a few vague references to ongoing research on a new "bee vac," construction of prototypes of such going on in the background, etc. This, it so happens, is the key to BEES IN A JAR.

Diagram of the Bee Vac, consisting of a a vaccuum attached to a bucket within which is a smaller container. Bees are trapped in the smaller container.

   I introduce to you: THE BEE VAC (patent pending!). Beekeepers have been hoovering bees into things for many many years now, but I'm not sure a beevac has ever been designed and built that is quite so... complicated. Usually it's simply a vacuum that leads into a bee receptacle. The removable "Bee Containment Pod" --as I like to call it-- is incredibly handy though. Sometimes you just need your bees on the go!

really everything in this picture is described below, except I don't mention the invisible chicken in a top hat

   In the above picture you can see latest prototype Bee Containment Pod (BCP?), which is the one I used in this mission. It is upside down in this picture (note that the entire bottom comes off, allowing one to disgorge the contents). To the BCP's right is the Relatively Ordinary Bucket and mostly off frame and upside-down to the left is the shopvac head.

   Film shoot was at 3pm on Friday. That morning my boss Dave and I leapt into the beemobile when a call came in about a swarm in a park and vaccuumed them into the Beevac.

   Several hours later I show up to the shoot with several thousand aspiring actresses in a canister. The shoot is taking place at a dollar bookstore, and I have to wait through several other scenes. It's apparently a film student's final project. The scenes I see prior to the bees seem to involve a couple arguing.
   Because the jar is badly ventilated I don't put the bees in the jar until I'm told the bee scene is coming up. Even then I don't put the lid on them until the last possible minute.

   As you can see from the video, the secret to placing bees in a jar is thus:

(A) Place jar on ground
(B) Make a large funnel, place it atop the jar
(C) Shake the bees from your container into the funnel.
(D) ?????
(E) Profit!

   One will want to do this far away from anyone else, since, for god knows what reason, many people do not actually enjoy being surrounded by mini-aerial-kittens. At first everyone from the film crew gave me a very very wide berth, but eventually some were overcome by curiosity, and observing that I obviously wasn't getting stung, ventured to come over and meet the bees. After observing the bees up close for awhile and talking to me about the Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Bees several were definite fans of our little furry friends.

   Finally the call came out for the bees. I picked up the jar, gave it a little jolt to knock the bees off that were hanging on the piece of screen I'd placed over the top, and replaced the screen with the lid. The lid had several holes punched into it for ventilation but this was very clearly insufficient -- the temperature of the jar rose ten degrees in thirty seconds and condensation began forming on the sides.
   Fortunately by now several film staff members genuinely cared about the well-being of the bees. When it turned out the bees weren't going to be on stage as immediately as thought, one of the newly converted bee enthusiasts (I don't know shit about film staff positions but her card says Producer, so lets call her that) had the jar given back to me to be un-lidded until the true last minute.

A child of about ten holds the jar o bees carefully. Makeup artists have covered him in fake bee stings

   Pictured above is relatively what it looked like when the bees were used in the shot. Here he's just practicing taking it out of the bag, in the actual shot that other fellow wasn't there. In the scene, the protagonist couple is standing in the bookstore aisle discussing something when the kid happens along asking them where he can find diphenhydramine (which he reads off a piece of paper)(which you may recognize by its more common name, benadryl). They ask him what happened, he shows them the jar o bees, they say "wow uh.. you probably shouldn't do that," and he shuffles off.

   Once the bees were done shooting I hurried the bees back out to the truck and released them back into the Bee Containment Pod. Casualties hadn't been as high as I feared and there wasn't any evidence of any large scale death when I transferred them from the jar to the canister.

   Said goodbye to the staff I'd met, collected my pay, and the bees and I were headed back to the bee cave. Hopefully we'll be able to situate them in a hivebox and they'll live out their days doing everything bees love to do, occasionally telling their grandkids about the time they were moviestars.

EPILOGUE (apilogue?)

Current Music: The Black Watch - Dylan, Dylan, Dylan

   Earlier today I have just arrived back at the bee cave from checking on the hives at the new Bee Yard G*
   "You missed a weird call Kris!" says my boss, Dave, "someone wants me to put bees in a jar"
   "What??"
   "Some film crew. I said I'd do it for $150"
   "Bees in a jar?? WTF."
   "Yeah they're going to call back here in just a bit."

   They do indeed call back in a few minutes. Dave's talking to them about it, they need the bees for something they're shooting tomorrow (I still don't know exactly). And I get to thinking.
   "Hey Dave, you should tell them if they want someone on hand to work with the bees I'll do it for [twice my current hourly rate]" ** I say when he gets off the phone.
   "You want to to do it? I think it'll be a good thing for you to do, I told them I'd do it for $150, why don't you do it and you take the $150" says Dave.
   So I'm about to get $150 for putting bees in a jar! And possibly working with the film crew tomorrow which should be fun.

   Am presently waiting for the guy to show up. Might not do anything until tomorrow.

* Bees are doing alright. There's a lot of pincer bugs in the hives (well by a lot I mean one or two in each of several hives), so I think I might look up these critters and see what their presence tells me about the environment. Things like this can tell you things about the moisture temperature or other factors which would be otherwise undetectable to humans. Forensic beekeeping if you will.
** I'm sort on an independant contractor here (well, am paid as one) so it's not weird for me to potentially fly off and work for something else, in fact I do all the time (usually for crazy adventures)

I. The Gatekeeper
   "First thing tomorrow, we're out of there! We're moving everything out immediately, I'm tired of this shit!!"

   First thing this morning, Dave is all about moving completely out of the property in which two of our three current bee yards are. Goodbye mysterious 200 year old bell. Goodbye cannons. Goodbye a dozen other fun mysterious things (old wagon, bunker, water well, adobe castle, etc), and goodbye Bee Yard D and Bee Yard E.

   He says the owner called him up yesterday all hollering that I didn't close the big gate to the property. This has happened on several occasions and usually we're almost certain we did not leave the gate open. The first time it happened I'd been up there with Dave, which was fortunate for the obvious reason that there were two of us who were pretty sure we remembered closing the gate. The second or third time it happened it happened to have been the first time I'd gone up there with Ryan, Dave's right hand man in the bee control side of the business, and I couldn't have possibly been more certain I closed the gate because I'd been showing Ryan what to do and where to hide the key, etc.
   To hear Dave tell it, this guy just calls him up and starts shouting in his ear that we left the gate open and giving Dave cubic yards of grief over it.
   In this most recent case though, the guy would be right. I did leave the gate open. Because I found it open. The gate was wide open, and a number of tents could be seen just a little ways in (the other activity I passingly mentioned in yesterday's entry). Knowing the guy was borderly psychotic about the gate being closed I paused for a long while looking between the open gate, the sign that says "PLEASE LEAVE GATE AS YOU FOUND IT" and the tents, eventually concluding that the gate had been left open by the other people so they could ingress/egress and I should obey the large sign instructing me to leave the gate as I found it, and so I didn't touch the gate.
   Next time I'm taking my chances locking people in over getting grief over the open gate. If there ever is a next time.

   HOWEVER, later I talked to Amy, our office manager, and she apparently had been present when Dave received the call. She said it seemed like a very calm unexciting call in which her impression was only that the guy had asked when we were up there.
   Now, knowing Dave, and I'd think you'd be starting to get an impression of him here by now, I'm wondering if all this time it had just been like a game of telephone. Where the message passes through several people and gets garbled. But in this case, a game of telephone routed through Dave, in which the message is liable to get utterly warped and any negative element gets magnified into a mountain. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy had just asked and at the end of the conversation reiterated the importance to him of the gate being closed, and Dave felt it was rude and gradually built it up in his head over the next 20 hours.

II. Summoning Zombies
   Yesterday you may recall I mentioned I was working on researching potential biological control of ants. That is-- using something that eats ants such as spiders or lizards rather than chemicals.
   Additionally I wrote about post mortem inspections of failed beehives and how of late I've been finding dead bees that don't look dead -- prompting someone to make a joke about "zombees."
   Today these two things come unexpectedly together.

   This morning I emailed the attractive and delightful cutting-edge bee researcher Judy Wu. I'd met her at the state bee convention in 2008. Cooped up in a hotel in snowy tahoe we'd stayed up late "getting to know eachother" if you know what I mean. If you don't, I mean we talked about bees of course. Anyway she had gotten involved with bees through research in biological control, so it seemed natural to ask her.
   She wrote me back, among other things noting this article about the use of "phorid flies" in the United States (and elsewhere) to control ants. Specifically, this is one of those species of flies that lay eggs in ants, which then hatch and turn the ants into zombies ... before eventually decapitating them (the only effective way of killing a zombie as you know).

   Maybe I could leave [land owner] a little parting gift of... an army of zombie ants?

This Morning
   Jeremy and the lads discover Dave has a dissecting microscope here and entertain themselves dissecting dead queen cells. It was a comically scientific looking scene as the lads carefully sliced open the peanut-like queen cell and examined the queen larvae carefully.

Around 11:00
   "Alright, let's make a decision here" say Jeremy.
   We all happen to already be standing in more or less a circle in the beecave warehouse/garage (Jeremy, Ryan, Bob & myself), we form a circle and Get Serious.
   "Where are we getting food? I didn't like the papa john's yesterday, what did you think Kris?" Jeremy asks me as if it's my turn to make a report at a board meeting.
   "I thought it was fine, but then again I'm not a pizza connoisseur like yourself" (Jeremy used to manage a Papa Johns, before he joined the bee cave.
   "That's not a very positive review, hmm. I wish Heart Attack was closer"
   It takes me a moment to figure out what "Heart Attack" refers to, but then I correctly guess it's Pedros Tacos down by the mission. Bob and Jeremy both hold their stomach and make a pained expression just thinking about it, and Bob comments "those quesedillos, they'll change your life!"
   Some more ideas are put forward and bounced around in a business-like manner.
   "Well what about Orange Kitten?" says Bob, referring to the local chinese place by the probably reprehensibly-un-PC nickname we've come to know it by, a reference to a presumed mispronunciation of "Orange Chicken" with a bad chinese accent. I actually once asked for Orange Kitten there and the (hispanic) employees looked at me like I had antlers.
   "Hm what?" Jeremy was distracted for a moment.
   "We're thinking fried cat, what do you think?"
   "Hmmmmmmmm I dunno, what do you think?" turns to me
   "I like Orange Kitten I've only ever had one bad experience there"
   Everyone seems on board with the cat.

   The lads then turn to talking about their latest high scores on one of those online flash games. Apparently, they're fighting over which of them has the world high score these days.

   We happen to all be out getting into our respective vehicles at almost the same time shortly after. As Jeremy pulls by me he says excitedly out his window "hey, we got the Taliban's number two!!"
   "Go team!" I say, and I'm about to add, but he says it word for word as I was about to:
   "We're gonna waterboard the shit out of him!!!"

   Also earlier today Amy the office manager joked with Dave that we can manage to operate several fairly complicated devices in here but not a coffee maker (I'd showed her that cartoon). Dave proceeded to in complete seriousness extol to her the several ways that coffee making is too complicated for us.
   A company credit card has been dedicated to the morning coffee run to Crazy Eddie's. Amy gave it to me with explicit instructions not to let it fall into Dave's hands (or else he'll overspend on it).
   I AM GUARDIAN OF THE COFFEE

Project of the Moments - Biological Control
   My project of the moment is to investigate biological control methods for the ants that are currently overrunning our bee yards. Step (A), identify: It is a yellow and black arboreal ant, and I think a species of the Formica genus. Still trying to nail it down. In the end it might not matter what species but it's something to do eh?
   Step (2) find some kind of insect or animal that eats ants but not bees. Presumably one that is (2A) economical to acquire in mass and introduce to the bee yards; and (2B) native to the area, because I am not a fan of introducing invasive species in places. I know lizards and spiders eat ants but I'm not sure if lizards don't eat bees (and if it's economical to get enough of them to control the ant problem). Read that black widows do but ughhh I hate black widows and they def love to eat bees.
   But yeah the advantages of figuring out a biological control would be obvious. All chemical insecticides that impact ants also impact bees, as they are very closely related. A biological control that happens not to eat bees would have a much more focused impact. And it would even be "organic!" :D

   So at work this morning. Ryan is sawing / hammering / other loud mechanical noises some contraption together. Apparently a prototype new "bee vacuum." Dave (boss) and Bob are talking excitedly about their shared interest in potted plants and where to get the best equipment for such, and I'm working on the computer. Suddenly Dave turns to me:
   "Hey Kris where's your integrated bee management definition??"
   "Um.. on this computer, why?"
   "I want it to have bee in it"
   "uhh... what??"
   "I B M, I want it to be I B E E M. What's it say currently?"
   "Uh, 'integrated bee management'"
   "Hm. [turns to Jeremy] have you seen our definition of integrated bee managment?"
   "Yeah"
   "You're not just an exterminator you know..."
...

   In other news, I bring you... a time travelling beehive!

It's actually apparenty a real hive someone designed for god knows what reason. It's titled "the Neighbours Improved Cottage Hive," leading me to wildly assume whomever published the picture of it threw it in as "and here's the crazy contraption my jackass neighbour designed ... it keeps breaking the space time continuum ... jackass."

(from this blog of pages and pages of different styles of beehives)

The seemingly endless variety of beehive designs reminds me of an age-old adage, frequently quoted today and also found quoted in literature written as many as 150 years ago -- "Ask any five beekeepers a question and you will get six answers"

Current Music: The Bird and the Bee - Diamond Dave

   So remember Aberdeen (Washington)? Well my erstwhile boat and captain are still there, as the boat goes through major overhauls.

From Facebag, my captain's status and some comments that particularly highlight Aberdeen:
Jeremiah Gempler filled out another police report today. If you say Aberdeen is boring..... well... you've never been to Aberdeen.
Someone A: Did the guy living under the half-a-fiberglass boat go ballistic and start whacking the fishermen with a stick or something?
Someone B: Things to do in Aberdeen:
1) Visit the Lady Washington!
2) Fill out police reports?
Someone C: 3) The official pastime: tweakerspotting
Someone D: is that guy under the stairs still live there with his 3 viscious dogs?
Someone E: Aberdeen is such an interesting place
i_id: You know we need details here.
Jeremiah: two weeks ago I witnessed a dramaticaly slothy bar fight and had to fill out a report and today I chased down a shoplifter out of home depot with my car and help pin him down w/ an off duty cop while talking to dispatch w/ my bluetooth headset...fun times... nothing makes your monday better than ruining someone eleses.

   So yeah, that's Aberdeen. (okay, so, link added :D )

Meanwhile, todays quotes from the bee cave!
Dave: We have a documentary film crew here tomorrow so... can we try to get the toilet paper on the fucking roller???
Bob: Um, I dunno, that's pretty complicated...
...
Later we realize there is NOT, in fact, a roller for the TP in the bathroom. (which actually moves the issue from the category of "simple things we can't handle" to "some kind of harebrained project, so of course we'll do it!" and Ryan set about installing one.

Amy (Office Manager): So Dave said we should split these tomatoes he brought from his garden, [and with a look of excitement] do you know how to make [something cooking related]
Me: I don't know shit about cooking tomatoes!
Amy: Do you... like tomatoes?
Me: [cheerfully] No I fucking hate tomatoes!
Amy: So... why are you taking half?
Me: To spite you! :D
[awkward silence]
Me: Just kidding! My parents like tomatoes!

Pandora
   So I've been using Pandora.com to listen to music. After about 40 hours a month it cuts you off and says you need to either pay $36 for year long access or 99 cents a month. Why would I pay $3 a month when I can pay 0.99 month?? There's some really silly special benefits like oooh customize the background. Am I missing something?

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE BEE CAVE...

( Adventure! )

Transcript
( Transcript )

Current Music: The Aquabats - The Thing on the Bass Amp

   People are funny. They do a lot of things just because other people are doing them, and sometimes they don't do things specifically because other people do them. Once upon a time I wondered why suspenders ever went out of style and looked it up. Turns out it was better fitting pants around the turn of the century ... and the fact that women started wearing them so men abandoned them. Apparently men had worn their hair long for most of history, until the first world war -- then if you were drafted you had your hair shorn short (for lice) and if you had long hair you were a suspicious draft dodging hippie (not that hippies had been invented yet), and that perception continues today even though it's long since no longer suspiciously abnormal not to serve time in the army.

   I like to wear combat boots. I like having a single pair of shoes that I can wear hiking, out and about, slogging through snow, or polish up and wear when I'm trying to look dashing. Specifically I wear paratrooper boots for a variety of reasons (to protect against landing in a swamp and getting a boot full of water, they are higher and more watertight, which for me means better protection against bees).
   When I first showed up with them at work the lads teased me a little about my alleged "stormtrooper" boots. They all wear standard work boots. And you know what? They all get stung in the ankles.
   When I work with my boss doing something intensive in the bee yard, every single time he has to wrap duct tape around his ankles, because work boots and bee suits don't overlap enough (seriously look at this - he does that ever time). I've never gotten stung in the ankle.

   The other counter argument they've made against my boots is that my boots are black rather than brown. Bees are definitely more attracted to black when they're on the war path (it's the colour of a bear's nose, the only vulnerability on the beast), so they say "yeah have fun with all the bees swarming your feet." And you know what? They're right, when the bees are all good and stirred up I look down and my feet may be veritably covered in bees. But the way I see it, every bee on my boot isn't a bee on my face, and I've never been stung through my boot.

   Really, to me, tall black boots make so much MORE sense than small tan boots, that I think the only reason they DON'T wear boots more like mine is because such boots are suspiciously punkish. They are Good Hard Working Working-Class Americans, and they wear Working Class Boots. Yeah have fun getting stung in the ankles guys.

   Last time we went out to the bees Dave finally had enough of getting dozens of stings in the ankles while remain entirely unscathed, and ordered a pair of paratrooper boots himself.
   They arrived yesterday, and the lads all made fun of him.

Picture of the Day

Apparently this is preferable to god forbid wearing boots that look military

   Two people got fired at work yesterday. And we only employ seven people!

   Well one won't know he's being fired until tomorrow, but we made the decision today.

   So as I arrive yesterday morning boss Dave and junior technician Bob are already having a heated argument. It seems Bob is sick and Dave wants to send him home but he adamantly doesn't want to be sent home. I think he must have been saying that if he goes home Dave is going to hold it over his head or something because somehow Bob managed to escalate getting sent home for the day rapidly into getting sent home permanently. Dave confiscated the keys to his truck and everything and told him to call someone to come pick him up (since he'd drivin the company truck to work).
   Bit of an awkward moment: while Bob was out waiting to be picked up it came time to do the coffee run (Dave buys everyone coffee every morning), so I have to ask "um... should I ask Bob if he wants anything?" ("yes").
   By the time I returned Bob had been unfired (typical), and gladly took a sickday and went home for the day.

   Shortly it came time for new guy Mike and I to go out to the bees to finish what we were doing yesterday. I was looking forward to enacting my plan of subjecting him to progressive talk radio, but I was waiting till he tried to put on Rush Limbaugh before putting it into effect and he never actually tried today (see here for why I planned to do this). But the drive to work was good, I was actually in a pretty decent mood and he seemed to be as well and was yammering about shit I didn't care about and I was politely pretending not to be entirely disinterested in his thorough analysis of how great metal bands are.
   Just around the corner from the bee yard he said "Hey let's stop here and put the suits on before heading up to the bee yard." To which I responded "No the bees shouldn't be riled up yet we'll be fine putting them on up there, I don't want to make a big production out of it."
   Arriving up at the yard I parked in the middle of the yard (we have bees on three of four sides of a relatively square plateau that's maybe 50 yards to a side) and jumped up on the truck to get the suits. He's standing just outside the passenger side door and almost immediately hollers "Man I'm trying to piss here and I'm already getting stung!!!"
   Naturally, my reaction was: "You're trying to piss RIGHT THERE?! ON THE TIRE?!? Why didn't you go to the bushes on the edge of the yard?!? I don't want the middle of my bee yard to smell like urine!!!!"
   Anyway when he'd finished desecrating the vicinity I tossed him his suit and he jumped in the cab to put it on away from the bad bad bees. Meanwhile I took my time putting my suit on standing on the flatbed.
   Finally he emerged and commenced lighting his smoker. I had to wait for him to finish with the lighter so I was just idling about for a moment. I turn around and there's a fire in the brush at his feet ... AND HE HASN'T NOTICED!!!
   Granted this could theoretically happen to anyone.. well, no, because of the seriousness of the consequences I would expect anyone using a smoker near brush to pay extreme attention to whether or not anything is catching fire. And further, due to the overwhelming gravity of the potential consequences (recall if you haven't already that this area is routinely ravaged by national emergency level wildfires), it ain't no small thing to accidentally start a brush fire.
   Anyway, this story is only just getting started.
   So THEN, he has his smoker lit, so I ask for the lighter so I can light mine.
   "No." he says "Tomorrow if you stop before we get to the yard so we can put our suits on you can have the lighter, but because you didn't I'm not letting you have the lighter today." (!!!!!)
   I promptly turned on my heel and called Dave. "Um... we have a problem." had a short convo in which I mentioned that the guy had already almost started a brush fire and was now refusing to give me the lighter, then had to dissuade Dave from coming out there immediately. While I was having this short conversation Mike left the lighter on the truck bed and went over to the hives to start working.

   Awhile later my smoker had gone out, as it is wont to do, so I needed to relight it. I went to the truck but the lighter wasn't on it. Went over to Mike and asked for it.
   "Bring it back to me when you're done though"
   "I think it would be better to leave it on the truck where I don't have to go through you every time I need it"
   "No bring it back to me."
   "Is it... your personal lighter?"
   "Yes"
   "Is there a company lighter on the truck?"
   "No"
   "Well we should get one on it"
   "Yeah you should get one" (but of a background, I ask him every day before we head out if everything is on the truck, since he's the one that cleans the equipment and such, so he's basically responsible for making sure it's all ON the truck. If the only piece of a critical item of equipment on the truck is something of his he's gonna be a weiner about, I don't consider it "on" the truck, and if he's going to give me attitude about how _I_ should make sure it's on the truck, well he's talking like he's fired already)

   Anyway, we went about our work. He had a tendency to every so often go get in the cab of the truck to take off his veil because there was a bee in it or something (note I went through the day with about ten bees in my veil, never felt the need to empty them out). As the day went on he started spending more and more time in the cab of the truck until for the last hour or two he was spending more time in the cab than not.
   Around 3:30 I was working on a hive he had already been through but hadn't found the queen, and he was sitting in the cab of the truck. He rolled down the window and hollered at me "the bees swarmed up and killed the queen!" while making urgent hand motions that I should just get on with it. Well that makes no fucking sense that the bees would do that so I just kept on looking for the queen, but it did explain some things.
   Namely, in the past two days I've found and killed 10 queens and not been able to find the queen in 5 hives. He's reported killing 19 and not finding her in 2. At first I was feeling very concerned that he was so much better at finding queens than me, but after hearing his ridiculous explanation for why this queen should be declared dead I'm more confident his higher numbers are just the result of being more careless ... and no longer confident in the quality of his work at all.

   About ten minutes later I missed a call from the office. I waited ten minutes for him to finally get out of the cab and then I got in to call the office back (can't operate phone with leather gloves on, can't take them off out there). Notgonnalie I was planning on venting to the office about him, but was going to at least say we should return because he's not working any more, BUT ... he hopped back in the cab almost immediately. So I just told the office I was returning their call and we were still working. Then I hopped out and went back to work.
   He sat there for a few minutes I think trying to decide what to do now since he had been assuming it was time to go home but had just see me say it wasn't. Then he rolled down the window and shouted at me "Hey man I'm getting really stung up here we need to go!!!!"
   "Dave told us to stay until this job is done. I wouldn't call it a day if I was getting stung either. If you want us to go home you need to call the office and convince them to tell me to head back."
   A few minutes later I get a call from a rather confused Amy in the office. I walk down the hill so I can talk to her about the whole situation. Do end up saying we should go back due to the fact that he's no longer functioning (and the only remaining hives are hives we've already been through and the queen is probably just in a corner somewhere right now and we'd have better luck another day when she's on a frame). Also I right off the bat noted that it is my recommendation that he be terminated (and she said Dave agrees and they've already prepared his final paycheck).

   Now I try to look at it from his point of view, and he probably thinks I'm a crochety hardassed asshole, BUT, I would never ask him to do anything I wouldn't do:
   (1) He acts like its a crime I wanted to put the suits on in the bee yard, but I did that myself (and of course the appropriate thing for him to do would have been to just have me give him the suit in the cab and maybe go over my head and ask Dave to ask me to stop outside the yard first);
   (2) really, I wouldn't have stopped working myself until either the job was done or it was somehow impossible to continue (such as darkness was setting in, it started pouring, or I got I dunno 220+ stings).
   ?(3) He apparently told Amy he had holes in his suit and had 40 stings (first of all because I think he's a weiner I'm going to go ahead and assume the holes he's talking about are the openings at the front and back of the zipper that every suit has that bees can sometimes get in (also he had specifically wanted THAT suit), second of all I'm gonna assume 40 is an exaggeration). I once got 130 stings on a job and did I stop working for a moment until the job was done? No I did not. I'm pretty sure any of our lads in the bee control side of the business would keep on working for the rest of the day if they got 40 stings. It may seem like a lot to a non-beekeeper, but if you're going to be employed as a beekeeper you need to be able to suck it up and not be stopped by 40 stings.
   Additionally, the APPROPRIATE thing to do would have been for him to immediately inform his supervisor (ie me) that he had holes in his suit. He never told me this. If he had, I would have immediately traded suits with him. When we had only one pair of good gloves yesterday I let him wear them and wore the rubber ones bees can sting through. I've been using the janky smoker. I may apparently be a hardass but I won't ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do and I'll always put myself in the more precarious position than my subordinate.

   So yeah. Today he finds out he's out of a job ... and I'm back to beekeeping directly with crazy hardass Dave.

Totally Unrelated Picture of the Day

Some Guy tries to shoot a plane.

Oh speaking of that downed Air France jet, some Air France life vests washed up on the beach near Dave's house. This was months ago, but it was still kind of eerie.

   Back at Bee Busters. I had missed the bees. A surprising amount has changed in the two weeks I was gone. There's a new office assistant, and a new assistant beekeeper. And..

   Co-worker Jeremy, with a huge grin on his face told me about his week off, and how he and his girlfriend had gone up to Napa. They did the "wine train" and all that, and then took a hot air balloon ride. And while doing so, he proposed to her. (she said yes).
   He's not sure on a date yet but he says within a year ("we've had a long enough 'engagement'!" -- they've been dating years and years), but already this year (2009) my good friend Allen, my ex Garian, and my good friend / former roommate Ben are getting married. Tis the year of marriages! O:

Spain!
So Kerri and I are presently working on our itinerary for the May 14 - 26 Spain trip. We're arriving in and leaving from Barcelona, and thinking about spending a few days in Zaragosa as well. Additionally thinking of making some day-trips to nearby areas as well. If anyone knows anything about this area and/or has an opinion and/or advice I'd greatly appreciate it! (:

Picture of the Day

It came to my attention in making that other post that I had never picture-of-the-day-ed these other pictures of the bridge.

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Entries tagged with bee busters

Crazy People I Have To Deal With II

Crossing the T

Another Day in the Bee Mines

Yet Another Day in the Life

Ogres Across the Fence

Rescuing Bees

A Day in the Life

Picture of the Day

Hiring

Patent Pending!

Jar O Bees

Bees in a Jar!

Gatekeeper Round! Summon the zombies!

Team Spirit

Beekeeping Contraptions

Daily Quotes and Such

LJ Idol - The Quest For a Drink

23 of 30 - Boots on the Ground

05 of 30 - Firing People

Back w/ the Bees / Spain Planning I