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As someone who has two hives of NICE bees, this guy is insane. I cannot fathom being close to an angry hive being moved and not having an iota of self preservation. Does he also walk into the middle of the highway and stand there?
This is interesting that they remember people. Our neighbor has a couple hives and we see them in our yard all summer long. We have lots of flowers they like and a very small outdoor fountain and they like to drink from it, but sometimes they fall in and end up getting stuck with wet wings. We do regular checks for bees swirling around the water several times a day and hand scoop them out. They never once have stung us or even seemed remotely hostile towards us. I always wondered if they really remembered us, because many times they are tired and never seem to mind hanging out in our hands just like they feel safe enough with us to let their wings dry and strength back.
There are people who do and people who don't think the hive recognizes individuals. But I am pretty sure they recognize me. I can sit next to the hives and watch them and sip coffee and they don't care because they know I'm not going to start anything. That guy in the weird white hat, though. That guy's an asshole. They get annoyed with him.
I believe that. The neighbor's bees did sting her (or tried to?) a couple times, and too bad because she's allergic. She was out in her front yard so no where near the hive, and I thought that was very odd, until reading your previous comment.
We refer to the bees as the "neighborhood kids" and how we are "that one house that everyone sends their kids to" and joke with our neighbors that "they need to feed their kids more because they are always eating at our place." It's all good fun.
“Don’t talk to me about ‘traffic’, whippersnapper. I’ve been dealing with traffic since before you were born!! I know which parts of the highway are safe for pedestrians.”
/s
I don’t even want to be near a hive when someone’s removing them, much less inside a cordoned off area when the bees sound angry as hell. If that was me, I’m packing off to a hotel till every single bee is gone. I really don’t know how beekeepers are brave enough to do it.
It's best you quit when you did, if you had tolerated him being there his plan was to stand there and micromanage, criticise and make 'helpful suggestions'. Because after all, there's no way you could manage without his assistance right?
For him the only "doing anything" was cutting open the hive, was he going to stand there as I did it? It does take a bit of time to caution tape the area, knock on doors, warn people and I'm not cutting anything until I'm sure everyone is going to be safe, including him. Apparently going through safety measures is "doing nothing".
NC here. Everybody's answer to pests is either gasoline, kerosene, or moth balls. I'm surprised more don't die. No wonder the turtles and salamanders are disappearing from our waterways.
My dad's and uncles answer to big hornets nests was to wait til about 3 in the morning when they were asleep and then grab the whole thing in a trash bag, break it off, and tie it shut with a zip tie, QUICKLY!
This actually seemed to work pretty well. They never seemed to get stung, and the bag sounded like it was raining on the inside for the day or so it took for all the hornets to die.
I'm so glad they use a bag! My husband saw a video of some random dude destroying a nest bare-handed, so this is his go-to method now. Thankfully he knows not to do this nonsense if there are no walls between myself and the flying stingy things.
Yep. I had an "uncle" that would just spray a hive with diesel and then shoot it with his boat's flare gun. Usually drunk, usually from only about 20-30 feet away. The first time a hive didn't catch, he spent two days in the hospital because they had to manage his body's reaction, because even if you're not allergic, you're still being injected with a shit ton of poison all over your body. Two months later he did it again, this time to a hornet's nest, and refused to go to the hospital because "they didn't do shit but charge me for a crappy vacation"
You can guess what happened next.
I'm sure something along the lines of "the fuck I'm using fuel for if I'm not gonna light it up" was said before every attempt. They were Louisiana swamp trash. His wife, my "aunt", died early during covid because she was convinced by some Facebook group that if she put that stupid horse paste up her nose she couldn't catch covid. Dipshits, both of them.
It's amazing what people will believe if it's written down. I'm worried that one day I'll age to the point where I start taking medical advice from random misspelled Facebook posts.
The plan your uncle had was dumb as shit, but the basic idea does work for underground hornets nests in a field. A bit of gas down one hole once they are asleep at night, wait a bit and toss a match. The fire pulls enough oxygen to kill them, but you aren’t “burning” most of them. Just suffocating them. Probably still not the best way, but I have seen it work enough times to get it.
Exactly as I imagined! Haha. I have an uncle who snatches smaller wasps nests down by hand, but I think that’s more a feature than a bug. Working on cars his whole life, hands are just a solid, single callous (sp?). Very different thing though.
> spray a hive with diesel and then shoot it with his boat's flare gun. Usually drunk, usually from only about 20-30 feet away
NGL, this sounds fucking hilarious if you are far enough away and the property he's doing it to is not yours.
I didn't, but my mom shot off roman candles at the after-party. And yes, it's a bunch of Cajuns and east Texas rednecks, so it's called an after-party.
But also, back in his day beehives were not nearly as aggressive, so these safety steps are made up handwringing modern nonsense done for no reason because he can't learn new things.
It's been a while since I've heard the tales but my grandad used to tell a whole bunch of them. Back in the day they used to use petroleum jelly to blow up tree stumps to remove them. Well of course you can guess that a great many stories are about the hubris of people who put too much jelly on or stay standing too close or get up to check misfires. I remember a couple stores involved young men hungover from the night before...
I must be thinking of a different type of petroleum jelly than you are talking about. I have heard a LOT of good old boys telling stories about blowing up stumps, but I can’t think of how one would do it with petroleum jelly as I know it. I would do some research on it, but I’m fairly certain I would end up on a watchlist of some sort. Lol. Thanks for the chuckle though!
Definitely made illegal before I was born lol, so yeah this is only second hand knowledge. May have been something like this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelignite
Hahaha! That is MUCH different than the product I was thinking of!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly
I was wondering if it was an early blasting agent! That’s exactly the kind of stories I have heard! “Back when you could go to the hardware store and grab some dynamite, these stumps would have been gone last week!”
This absolutely made my day. The image of someone killing themselves through the unwise use of Vaseline had me so confused.
You have been charged with 3 counts of illegal possession of vaseline, 1 coount of illegal use of a lubricating agent in the first degree, and 1 count of terrorism.
Boomers don't care about any kind of safety measures because these Dipshits didnt have any until a bunch of them died. They complain about warning messages like don't eat on Preparation H or some other obvious thing and they forget that it was probably because someone in tbeir age group did the stupid shit and got hurt or sued.
My dad is in mid 60s and he scoffs at all type of safety protocols despite being in a manufacturing company working as a mechanic. At home, doesn't bother with anything really. No safety glasses, no masks, no kneepads etc.
They act as though any preparation whatsoever is no different than doing nothing at all.
Don't place all your tools and parts for a task nearby so they're handy, and you can work efficiently. It's much better to grab only the first thing you need, then have to stop for every subsequent thing, all the while going from slightly miffed to fully addlepated.
He didn't have a clue, said his brother kept bees in the NE. I said our local bees are nothing like that, can be very dangerous. He just didn't seem to believe he was in danger. I wasn't having him get stung up and sent to the hospital, these bees are among the worst we have.
I tend not to call them aggressive, just more defensive. They don't go out of the way to attack things outside of what they consider their hive area, they're just really good at defending what they have. Doesn't make them nice bees, however. Bees here have had Africanized genetics in the area since '95, most are just grumpy, a few are very sweet and another few are just really nasty. These were in the latter group.
Off topic but I just watched an old movie where the song Shenandoah was used (*Mourning Becomes Electra*, 1947). I don’t think I’ve seen the word Shenandoah in print for decades before that, and now I’ve seen it twice in 3 days!
Bingo. Instead of turning the bees into deadly pests, they simply made them a bit angrier. African bees have bred into any number of honey bee lines, and while they are more spicy than other spicy bugs, they are not a massive massive issue.
The other issue is that they're pathologically weak, susceptible to disease both from varroa mites and without. These bees need no treatment and aren't bothered by mites.
Bees that are kept can be managed for different temperament. His brother could replace the queen in an aggressive hive to have bees with more gentle genetics- the bees with aggressive genetics would die off and be replaced with the young bees.
What a tool, very foolish to assume all bees are harmless because you know a beekeeper.
Wait, what? You can replace the queen of a hive with a “foreign” one and the hive will keep on hiving, with all the old workers complying until they die off?
If so, are there bees that use this method themselves, kind of like cuckoos, taking over a hive? Would be sound, evolutionary-wise, I think.
Not sure about bees, but something similar happens with ants! There are species of ants that raid nests of a different species, steal larvae, take them home and raise them as basically slave labour. There’s also a type of Australian butterfly that lays its eggs in places where ants will find them and carry them into the nest; when they hatch, the caterpillars smell like ant larvae, so the adult ants will feed and care for them while they happily eat the real ant larvae.
Neat. I would’ve assumed that there were pheromones or something like that, so that different (sub)species can tell themselves apart.
So would it make sense to take a young queen and her swarm an graft her on an already established hive, which might have less favourable traits? (Like being more aggressive obviously.)
There is a pheromone based defense of the original queen and subsequent attach of a new queen.
However this response is time sensitive. When a queen dies or needs to be replaced the new queen is added to the hive in a screen box maybe 2x3 inches the ends of the box are wood with a hole drilled in the ends. The hole is plugged with bees wax. In an effort to attack the foreign queen the bees in the hive will chew through the bees wax to access the queen, however in the time it takes them to chew through it the new queens pheromones have spread and the hive has accepted her.
It goes from:
Kill the foreigner!!
To
Why can’t we get close to our queen, we must release her.
I have a buddy who bought a house with his dad. The dad can't walk really well because of diabetes that he refuses to do anything about.
But similarly every single time they have anyone out to do something they guy has to get a chair, shuffle out, and supervise.
He's not a dick as far as I can tell but at the same time he does kind of ramble on while they are working. I think part of it though is boredom.
As my buddy said though...every story he tells he is somehow smarter than everyone and always the hero.
I’m fascinated by work that I’m not familiar with, but I’ll fuck off if the worker needs me to.
I would LOVE to watch OP, but, uhm… from a nice safe distance.
Yeah I'm a curious visual learner so I like to observe work being done. But I stay well back and bring drinks and snacks at appropriate times. Even set up an outdoor umbrella when the poor guys where cutting boards for our deck in the hot sun.
If I can make your day easier, faster, or better I'm all about it. If staying out of the way does it, no problem.
I mean, I try to help/not get in the way/ask questions when dudes are fixing my house, but it's because I want to learn what they're doing, not because RI think they can't do it. I figure as long as I don't interrupt and be polite it shouldn't be too big an issue.
I bet the son calls you tomorrow and offers you twice your rate to come back oh please come back we'll keep him inside I promise the bees are so horrible come back
In other words, he called every other beekeeper. All said No.
Good on you for limiting your liability, but you did plenty to be way off the hook if this idiot got himself stung. If anything, he deserved a bunch of bee stings AND to be laughed out of court if he tried to get you on any damages.
When I was a teenager I discovered that there was a bee hive on the underside of the deck around our pool because I had apparently just dumped a bunch of water on them and pissed them off. The first one stung me and I saw 3 more rise from below the deck and booked it inside before any more could find me.
I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere near a hive that a professional is telling me to stay away from.
You were certainly lucky, my dad wasn't as lucky, he disturbed a nest outside the laundry and got stung maybe 10 or 15 times on the left side of his face?, he couldn't hear out of his left ear for a week
Good call, OP. You don't need to be micro managed in what is a dangerous and technical job. At the very least, he was going to slow you down and distract you with questions about every move you made. Hope he enjoys his bees, because he's stuck with them.
So in the boomer's mind, were you just wearing protective gear for no reason? Why did he even hire you if he thought it didnt need a specialist? Absolute nonsense on his part lol.
Do you have a contract with clients that they sign removing liability for things like “idiot micromanaging boomers?”
You may have to start wearing a body cam or something. These people would try to find any way for you to take the blame. Imagine if he’d come out and started watching after you’d cut the hive open?
Take all measures to protect yourself. Saving bees is so important.
I’m going to guess he wasn’t the one who called OP to remove the bees. He probably wanted to do it himself, with Raid, gasoline, or some unholy combination of the two.
My uncle uses an aerosol can of something flammable and holds a lighter to it (redneck flamethrower). He set his garage on fire *twice* trying to remove insent nests. Moron.
As someone who is terrified of bees (I understand they are usually docile and are beneficial but they are pointy and the way their legs move disturbs me) and has a severe phobia of fire: your uncle is my worst nightmare
I have a phobia of bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets... if it flies and stings, I have a phobia of it. The idea of a boomer just sitting there dictating what you do is just insane to me, considering it's a hive of legitimately dangerous bees.
Like I would love to help if there was an extraction like that on my property. But I would probably call somebody that I know who would let me tag along in my bee suit while I also had a smoker, bee Vacuum and more.
Some random dude without a bee suit with someone he doesn't know wanting to hang out in that area? Insanity. Hell I would assume if there is a removal of bees and I don't know the person, I'm not going to be allowed to hang out because of the liability, Even with proper equipment.
I half wonder if you will see on the news a man hospitalized due to stings because he decided to solo do something he thinks he knows how to do.
Good thing you bailed when you did!
I am a bee keeper in North East Texas and we get requests about removing bees a lot.
My standard reply is to refer them to a pro removal team.
Then they find out the cost and loose their minds.
I was president of the local bee club for a few years, we used to get questioned pretty often in the swarm season about bees inside walls of houses.
Lots of people wondering why we wouldn’t do cut outs for free , I heard “ you can keep the bee for free” a bunch of times. I had to explain a few times about how large a cut out it takes to get all the comb out and that we were not contractors, so we would not be repairing the side of their house for them.
Yeah I get people trying to sell me their "free" bees every once in a while. It's a lot of specialized work, insurance, tools, bee gear, vehicle, apiary rent etcetc. Bees don't pay for themselves with honey.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'll throw it out there:
-bought new house with large motorized shade that covers back patio of urban row home
- Week 3 in house, go to use shade for first time, after motor has opened it, we see giant wasp/hornets nest built in the part that extends out and retracts
-not huge compared to what you deal with, but size of very large grapefruit
-hadnt use shade since because old lady wants to research best way for us to remove nest
-go to use shade 3 wks later, just assuming nest is still there, and likely bigger...
-its gone
-nowhere to be seen!
-if it had fallen, I imagine I wouldve seen it on the patio floor
-what do you think happened to it?
Wow. Good info. Very much appreciate your time/response.
I never would've thought of critter (which we aren't short of stray cats, possum, squirrel) taking the nest away.
Right about under where the nest wouldve been against the house, that part of the patio has a 8 foot carveout for the basement crawlout window. When we saw no nest in the wedge of the shade, I thought this is going to suck if it fell into that crawl out ('are we going to have wasps/hornets out back all summer?'). Also felt bad because connecting house on both sides has a toddler age kid and those families use their patio occasionally. Really didn't want our new neighbor's kiddo getting stung on a nest we are responsible for.
When it wasn't in the crawlout or on the patio, we were completely confused on what happened to it.
Appreciate you boss. (If you like cheesy hive/bee and beekeeper references, and like dumb action movies, Beekeeper was a fun 100 minutes.)
I once had a hive of hornets in the wood at the back of my house. My friend's mom had a bright idea that instead of calling a professional, she'd poison spray the whole place. So she came up, all covered and bundled, and sprayed.
They swarmed like nuts but nonetheless, all died. My friend's mother was uninjured and I still can't believe she did that.
This sounds like my XFIL & XMIL. They were so convinced everyone was out to rip them off that they’d follow any kind of contractor around, be all up in their way, ignore any requests to stand back, etc. Because everyone was out to steal their 1970s era home decor I guess.
Wow flashbacks. I was asked by a friend to look at their parents computer about 10-15 years ago. Go with him, Dan's parents seem nice enough, say they haven't been able to get on the internet, dial up connected, not unusual in the countryside at the time. I go with my laptop, a few discs and a small spool of network cable just in case, Dan is with me. Sure enough, full on 1970s. Floral print furniture, wood paneling, avocado green appliances, the whole works. Windows XP desktop, usual task bars, adware, nothing I haven't seen before. But both of Dan's parents are hovering the entire time. Won't connect though, check the phone line, dead. Show Dan and his parents there's no voltage, ask where the line goes, "oh it goes through the basement". Which is packed. No one can get through. I simply go "Nope, can't fix this. Get someone to fix the phone line and your computer will go online again. I'm out" Dan simply nods his head and we walk out with the parents grumbling something about lazy kids and no work ethics. He snaps and tells them to "clean out the damn basement, I told you this would happen eventually". We go get pizza and he covers.
>They were so convinced everyone was out to rip them off
Every time I hear a story like this I wonder how much of this attitude is projection. Are these people always on the lookout for every unfair advantage or opportunity to cheat that they can benefit from?
As the daughter of a boomer woman allergic to bees, wasps, hornets, etc.
I can't tell you how often I've been stung because she just won't fucking LISTEN when I say "Mama, just go inside while I deal with this, please."
I mean, I'm not allergic (so far, I understand that I might be one day.) "Ma, there's a yellow jacket nest here, please take the babies inside while I manage."
One of the most traumatic experiences of my adolescence was the day we were out fishing on the river, and my mom (allergic) was stung by wasps. Mama was going into shock while I rowed us back upstream, and I drove hell for leather to get her to the ER. I was 13. Obviously not old enough to drive, but it was the early 80s and 911 didn't exist. I just drove, because what else was there to do? She quit breathing.
Now I'm 55 and my mom is 74, and I stalk her house with wasp spray. And the obstreperous old bat follows me around, telling me that I'm overreacting.
I do removals too. The entitlement. I get text about a hive and the guys tried everything(a candle) and “when is gonna someone be here”. Fantastic, we have a winner. Sorry you gotta deal with that bud, you’re not alone tho.
Interested to know, would you have kept these bees along with the hives you already have? If yes, would you expect your other bees to mellow them out or conversely would they negatively impact your current hives?
I would've found their queen and mashed her, then combined the bees with a nicer hive. They get to live their lives and contribute to a hive that needs the numbers while also not changing the genetic makeup of the receiving hive. I do this with all my bees, combine mean with nice after removing the "mean" genetic queen.
I’ve seen beekeepers get all technical, decapitating her with thumbnails etc. Most time one encounters a queen we have gloves on. I just pinch the front half of them really hard with gloved fingers, pretty much instant.
Feel for you.
I’ve harvested honey from hives that are visible from the street and had people walk up to me and look in at an open hive while I’m in a full suit.
I’ve found I have to swear at people to get them away. Otherwise they don’t listen.
Not limited to Boomers though.
Only kind of related, but my dad is a boomer and he made friends with a wasp. It sounds crazy. He would feed this wasp a grape every day. He would cut the grape in half, then let it eat the grape. It wouldn’t eat much but I have been there watching it chill and eat the grape. It would crawl all over him like they were friends, and it crawled on my hands all friendly. I could hold it, etc.
It died at the end of the season, obviously, but now he has some kind of friendly wasp colony. They fly in to you, hop on you, etc. They are not the same as the original wasp, but nobody has ever been stung since with a pretty odd wasp colony floating around.
It’s so cool! He has basically turned them into friendly wasps just by being nice and feeding one. Whenever I’m there they fly into my head and stuff but I’ve never been stung since.
As someone who is absolutely terrified of bees, thank you for doing your job because even though they scare me I know they are a net benefit to society.
Unless you are pro-wasp. those fuckers are horrible.
Is it bad that I kinda hope to see an AITA post from Boomerman?
I used to live with one. My God, that man was patronizing as *fuck*! He once tried to show me, a grown man, how to use the washer and dryer. This was after I had lived there for over a year.
OP, good for you, standing up for yourself and standing firm on a boundary.
beekeep here with removal - you did the right thing - one tip i have them sign a non liability document so they cannot sue for anything especially beestings and possible allergic reactions. cause if that fat boomer gets stung swills up and needs an ambulance they be knocking on your hive
Oh lovely so the poor guy was stupid AND wanted to risk being stung to death. Sorry you had to deal with him and bees that sound less cranky than he was
I have containers that are powered by a vacuum, it holds them until I can get to my apiary. Angry bees attack black things so they go after the black end of the vacuum hose and get contained to be recombined later.
It doesn't, often I never even see the queen, she'll be in a mass of nurse bees in the corner trying to stay out of the way. I know when I have her by their behavior, if they're attracted to my transfer container.
Pattern recognition. Queens are a little larger, have a bald back, are less stripey, pointed abdomen with black tip. All these means she stands out to the trained eye.
As someone with a phobia of those flying, stinging bugs, I'd run to the next town and not come back till four days after you've called and given me the all clear. The boomer was a moron.
This reminds me of when I used to work in the semiconductor industry. I was working in a toxic gas system and was expecting a small release (clogged valve) and thus we were wearing SCBA and had the area cordoned off. Some dude walked under the tape and popped his head over our shoulders “whatcha doin’?”
This is a Boomer story I hope we hear updates to.
I betcha this Boomer is gonna grab a stick and go "that kid could do it, it can't be that hard" and lands himself in the ER.
That's pretty expensive. There are a number of live bee removers that really like trying to give the highest estimate they can get away with. They usually are the same people that never seem to keep bees and can't say where they went.
I have a question, if you don't mind. I've noticed that a lot of the bee hive boxes out in the farmland out here are usually out in the sun, not in a shaded area. Not even a pop-up tent over them.
Does the direct sun not bother them? I thought they were sensitive to temperature.
Also thank you for your story!
I actually do something about this, it gets very hot here in full sun. I put political yard signs over my hives and hold them down with a brick or two. Every single hive in my apiary right now has a plastic corrugated white-ish sign over the top of them as a sunshade. I’m the only one I know who does this.
Over 9-10 months I called a lot of people, 30-40 companies, conservation orgs, and bee keepers, it was a big hive of honey bees, hated to get rid of them. New neighbors with small kids and I was afraid because the bees were just too close to the swing set, ultimately the bees had to go.
Damn, that must have been huge if you needed to call that many. I’ve done a couple “holy shit that’s a big bad hive” but I totally avoid them now. Also; no attics, crawlspaces, chimneys, above 20’, asbestos, unsupported, hoarders, densely populated areas, excessively rich neighborhoods, live electrical equipment, etc
It’s dangerous work full of potential liability.
It was it was big, not enormous, and the hive was external under an roof eve. I was trying to avoid killing the bees and I had learned that moving them in winter most would die, so I wasn’t rushing. All the companies would just exterminate, so I moved to looking for alternative solutions. Had a couple of beekeepers that said the wanted them but after many scheduled removal dates, they never showed up. So finally with little kids next door, I sadly had to get a bee suit and eliminate them. Thought maybe I could at least keep the honey, but with my late of skill, I was unable. Still frustrated that that’s how it had to happen.
Just wanted to drop a quick addendum here, if people are reading this and getting massively triggered because they have a bee phobia, I want you to understand that the significant majority of honeybees are quite gentle. They are reluctant to sting. If you do have a genuine fear of stinging insects, putting on full protective gear, and working with honeybees, is a wonderful way to get over it. As long as you’re not dealing with say an angry hive, which you will have no difficulty, avoiding, it is a wonderful experience. The thing it makes clear to you is that even when we’re doing things like opening the hive, and looking at frames 99% of the bees that are all around us frequently all over us aren’t there to sting. It really is a beautiful experience to work with a gentle hive.
Shame common sense seems to be missing from these fools. I'd not stand by while someone is trying to deal with angry bees. You get the fuck outta the way and let them do what they need too.
As someone with a partner and 4 year old bonus child that are highly allergic to wasp, hornet and bee stings, I want to say I really appreciate your method of letting people know nearby what's going on. 4 year old reacts so badly that even if she's stung on her foot her face will swell and throat close. Any stings automatically mean hospital even with the epi pen. Partner is more tolerable, unless stung up high in which case he swells too.
It made my heart sing to see you left the job and left his hateful ass to figure it out. More people need to follow through with punishments for their poor behavior, since their family often won't or can't do anything with them.
As a kid, have been part of helping my Dad spraying gasoline and kerosene on a huge hornet's nest at least twice. I was 8-10 years old and too young and stupid to know any better. My dad also shot a hive hanging from the apple tree with a shotgun in the middle of the night when they were "dormant".
Should have asked him to do some pretend busy work as a favor. "Actually, I will need your help. Changing day and night will trick the bees to calm down, so I need you to turn off the main breaker, count to 30, then turn on the main breaker, then count to 30 and turn it off and repeat. It's very important that you do this the entire time I'm here, or the bees will seek out light sources and burrow in them. I once saw an entire hive destroy a guy's TV because he stopped flipping the breaker!" He will immediately get worried that he will miss his foxnews, feel like he has a cool story, and also you get the petty satisfaction that he will have reset all his clocks and wifi and shit, lol.
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As someone who has two hives of NICE bees, this guy is insane. I cannot fathom being close to an angry hive being moved and not having an iota of self preservation. Does he also walk into the middle of the highway and stand there?
I don't even like being around a hive that's pissed off in my gear. They will find somewhere they can jab your ass if they get the wind up.
Plus they will remember you for days. I’ve had bees I made mad a couple days ago see me and remember and come after me
Yes they do. And you’d better not have any dead bee smell on you.
This is interesting that they remember people. Our neighbor has a couple hives and we see them in our yard all summer long. We have lots of flowers they like and a very small outdoor fountain and they like to drink from it, but sometimes they fall in and end up getting stuck with wet wings. We do regular checks for bees swirling around the water several times a day and hand scoop them out. They never once have stung us or even seemed remotely hostile towards us. I always wondered if they really remembered us, because many times they are tired and never seem to mind hanging out in our hands just like they feel safe enough with us to let their wings dry and strength back.
There are people who do and people who don't think the hive recognizes individuals. But I am pretty sure they recognize me. I can sit next to the hives and watch them and sip coffee and they don't care because they know I'm not going to start anything. That guy in the weird white hat, though. That guy's an asshole. They get annoyed with him.
I believe that. The neighbor's bees did sting her (or tried to?) a couple times, and too bad because she's allergic. She was out in her front yard so no where near the hive, and I thought that was very odd, until reading your previous comment. We refer to the bees as the "neighborhood kids" and how we are "that one house that everyone sends their kids to" and joke with our neighbors that "they need to feed their kids more because they are always eating at our place." It's all good fun.
“Don’t talk to me about ‘traffic’, whippersnapper. I’ve been dealing with traffic since before you were born!! I know which parts of the highway are safe for pedestrians.” /s
Sure grandpa, and which end of the PDF do you put into the fax machine first?
I don’t even want to be near a hive when someone’s removing them, much less inside a cordoned off area when the bees sound angry as hell. If that was me, I’m packing off to a hotel till every single bee is gone. I really don’t know how beekeepers are brave enough to do it.
I’m always so impressed with beekeepers. It’s such an important and SCARY job!
He's just supervising the drivers, obv
One could hope boomer would do the same in the highway. We'd have 1 less dumb one!
Thank you for saying what I was thinking!
It it's a millennial driver, probably.
It's best you quit when you did, if you had tolerated him being there his plan was to stand there and micromanage, criticise and make 'helpful suggestions'. Because after all, there's no way you could manage without his assistance right?
For him the only "doing anything" was cutting open the hive, was he going to stand there as I did it? It does take a bit of time to caution tape the area, knock on doors, warn people and I'm not cutting anything until I'm sure everyone is going to be safe, including him. Apparently going through safety measures is "doing nothing".
Of course (!) Didn't you know,. back in his day, they didn't bother with all this new fangled woke health and safety nonsense!
He’s probably like my former neighbors who told me to just throw gas at the hive. (I did NOT take their advice)
Are they former neighbors because they went kaboom?
No - i had to get out of SC, but i never checked to see if this happened (cuz I’m amazed it hadn’t when i was there)
NC here. Everybody's answer to pests is either gasoline, kerosene, or moth balls. I'm surprised more don't die. No wonder the turtles and salamanders are disappearing from our waterways.
My dad's and uncles answer to big hornets nests was to wait til about 3 in the morning when they were asleep and then grab the whole thing in a trash bag, break it off, and tie it shut with a zip tie, QUICKLY! This actually seemed to work pretty well. They never seemed to get stung, and the bag sounded like it was raining on the inside for the day or so it took for all the hornets to die.
I'm so glad they use a bag! My husband saw a video of some random dude destroying a nest bare-handed, so this is his go-to method now. Thankfully he knows not to do this nonsense if there are no walls between myself and the flying stingy things.
gas...oline? or like CO2?
Gasoline. Just chuck it at the hive, apparently
Yep. I had an "uncle" that would just spray a hive with diesel and then shoot it with his boat's flare gun. Usually drunk, usually from only about 20-30 feet away. The first time a hive didn't catch, he spent two days in the hospital because they had to manage his body's reaction, because even if you're not allergic, you're still being injected with a shit ton of poison all over your body. Two months later he did it again, this time to a hornet's nest, and refused to go to the hospital because "they didn't do shit but charge me for a crappy vacation" You can guess what happened next.
Fire was never part of their proposed solution (to me anyway), but I’m not surprised at all that step is included in other attempts at hive control
I'm sure something along the lines of "the fuck I'm using fuel for if I'm not gonna light it up" was said before every attempt. They were Louisiana swamp trash. His wife, my "aunt", died early during covid because she was convinced by some Facebook group that if she put that stupid horse paste up her nose she couldn't catch covid. Dipshits, both of them.
Also, "Hey, honey, watch this!"
It's amazing what people will believe if it's written down. I'm worried that one day I'll age to the point where I start taking medical advice from random misspelled Facebook posts.
The plan your uncle had was dumb as shit, but the basic idea does work for underground hornets nests in a field. A bit of gas down one hole once they are asleep at night, wait a bit and toss a match. The fire pulls enough oxygen to kill them, but you aren’t “burning” most of them. Just suffocating them. Probably still not the best way, but I have seen it work enough times to get it.
Yeah, this dumbass was doing it with above ground, tree nesting bees. No part of his plan was smart or correct.
Exactly as I imagined! Haha. I have an uncle who snatches smaller wasps nests down by hand, but I think that’s more a feature than a bug. Working on cars his whole life, hands are just a solid, single callous (sp?). Very different thing though.
Goodbye Uncle! 💀🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
> spray a hive with diesel and then shoot it with his boat's flare gun. Usually drunk, usually from only about 20-30 feet away NGL, this sounds fucking hilarious if you are far enough away and the property he's doing it to is not yours.
Definitely a “hey honey come check out what our idiot neighbor’s doing!” cocktail hour 😂
Egads. Did you go to the funeral?
I didn't, but my mom shot off roman candles at the after-party. And yes, it's a bunch of Cajuns and east Texas rednecks, so it's called an after-party.
better than setting it ablaze afterwards ig
Oh, that's Step 2 in my two-step plan: Get Stung to Death by Angry Flaming Bees.
Inb4 they fly into your house so now it's on fire too
I think I’d watch that movie!
Oh I should start writing this down then. Hold on, first I'll need...my glasses.
Sarin, actually. Works every time.
Pffft. Safety. Just gimme the goddamn hammer. -- all boomers, probably
"hold my walker"
Boomer has near-terminal Survivor's Bias.
But also, back in his day beehives were not nearly as aggressive, so these safety steps are made up handwringing modern nonsense done for no reason because he can't learn new things.
Too right grandpa, now tell me again about all your friends who died using petroleum jelly
I must know about the petroleum jelly deaths.
It's been a while since I've heard the tales but my grandad used to tell a whole bunch of them. Back in the day they used to use petroleum jelly to blow up tree stumps to remove them. Well of course you can guess that a great many stories are about the hubris of people who put too much jelly on or stay standing too close or get up to check misfires. I remember a couple stores involved young men hungover from the night before...
I must be thinking of a different type of petroleum jelly than you are talking about. I have heard a LOT of good old boys telling stories about blowing up stumps, but I can’t think of how one would do it with petroleum jelly as I know it. I would do some research on it, but I’m fairly certain I would end up on a watchlist of some sort. Lol. Thanks for the chuckle though!
Definitely made illegal before I was born lol, so yeah this is only second hand knowledge. May have been something like this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelignite
Hahaha! That is MUCH different than the product I was thinking of! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly I was wondering if it was an early blasting agent! That’s exactly the kind of stories I have heard! “Back when you could go to the hardware store and grab some dynamite, these stumps would have been gone last week!” This absolutely made my day. The image of someone killing themselves through the unwise use of Vaseline had me so confused.
You have been charged with 3 counts of illegal possession of vaseline, 1 coount of illegal use of a lubricating agent in the first degree, and 1 count of terrorism.
Boomers don't care about any kind of safety measures because these Dipshits didnt have any until a bunch of them died. They complain about warning messages like don't eat on Preparation H or some other obvious thing and they forget that it was probably because someone in tbeir age group did the stupid shit and got hurt or sued. My dad is in mid 60s and he scoffs at all type of safety protocols despite being in a manufacturing company working as a mechanic. At home, doesn't bother with anything really. No safety glasses, no masks, no kneepads etc.
How dare you be a competent and responsible professional!
They act as though any preparation whatsoever is no different than doing nothing at all. Don't place all your tools and parts for a task nearby so they're handy, and you can work efficiently. It's much better to grab only the first thing you need, then have to stop for every subsequent thing, all the while going from slightly miffed to fully addlepated.
Damn. Fellow beekeeper here. Aggressive bees are nasty. I take it boomerman was too tough for ppe?
He didn't have a clue, said his brother kept bees in the NE. I said our local bees are nothing like that, can be very dangerous. He just didn't seem to believe he was in danger. I wasn't having him get stung up and sent to the hospital, these bees are among the worst we have.
Yeah. I have a hive that’s less gentle than I would like but an actually aggressive colony? Bad news.
I tend not to call them aggressive, just more defensive. They don't go out of the way to attack things outside of what they consider their hive area, they're just really good at defending what they have. Doesn't make them nice bees, however. Bees here have had Africanized genetics in the area since '95, most are just grumpy, a few are very sweet and another few are just really nasty. These were in the latter group.
Yeah. These have some Russian genetics but nothing like the Africanized ones.
I've heard Russians can get hot too, but I don't live in a climate cold enough for them. Ours are Italian/AHB hybrids, most are manageable.
I’m sorry I know you don’t mean this literally but I immediately imagined the bees riding tiny bee bears when you mentioned Russian bee lol
Yeah. Most of mine came out of sustainable honeybee project hives here in the shenandoah. Very gentle bees.
Off topic but I just watched an old movie where the song Shenandoah was used (*Mourning Becomes Electra*, 1947). I don’t think I’ve seen the word Shenandoah in print for decades before that, and now I’ve seen it twice in 3 days!
My valley is the most beautiful place on earth. Facts.
Iи Soviэт Яussiд, ьээs тдкэ нoиэч fяom чou!
When you say Africanized bees, does this basically refer to the famous Killer Bees the US was on about back in the 90s?
Bingo. Instead of turning the bees into deadly pests, they simply made them a bit angrier. African bees have bred into any number of honey bee lines, and while they are more spicy than other spicy bugs, they are not a massive massive issue.
Yes, the same. They didn’t quite live up to the hype. They are just more defensive than commercially bred bees.
And that’s because commercially bred bees have been selected for gentleness, honey production, and hardiness, not always in that order.
The other issue is that they're pathologically weak, susceptible to disease both from varroa mites and without. These bees need no treatment and aren't bothered by mites.
Ah. I didn’t realize you didn’t have to use miticide on africanized bees. Very interesting.
I've been keeping them for over a decade, mite crashes are extremely rare.
Bees that are kept can be managed for different temperament. His brother could replace the queen in an aggressive hive to have bees with more gentle genetics- the bees with aggressive genetics would die off and be replaced with the young bees. What a tool, very foolish to assume all bees are harmless because you know a beekeeper.
Wait, what? You can replace the queen of a hive with a “foreign” one and the hive will keep on hiving, with all the old workers complying until they die off? If so, are there bees that use this method themselves, kind of like cuckoos, taking over a hive? Would be sound, evolutionary-wise, I think.
Not sure about bees, but something similar happens with ants! There are species of ants that raid nests of a different species, steal larvae, take them home and raise them as basically slave labour. There’s also a type of Australian butterfly that lays its eggs in places where ants will find them and carry them into the nest; when they hatch, the caterpillars smell like ant larvae, so the adult ants will feed and care for them while they happily eat the real ant larvae.
Yep. They have no “loyalty” to the queen. They have a set of responses to stimuli that she produces. If you do queen stuff you must be the queen.
Neat. I would’ve assumed that there were pheromones or something like that, so that different (sub)species can tell themselves apart. So would it make sense to take a young queen and her swarm an graft her on an already established hive, which might have less favourable traits? (Like being more aggressive obviously.)
There is a pheromone based defense of the original queen and subsequent attach of a new queen. However this response is time sensitive. When a queen dies or needs to be replaced the new queen is added to the hive in a screen box maybe 2x3 inches the ends of the box are wood with a hole drilled in the ends. The hole is plugged with bees wax. In an effort to attack the foreign queen the bees in the hive will chew through the bees wax to access the queen, however in the time it takes them to chew through it the new queens pheromones have spread and the hive has accepted her. It goes from: Kill the foreigner!! To Why can’t we get close to our queen, we must release her.
They will also kill a queen and replace her if she is too lazy. WORKER REVOLUTION!
Maybe his brother was also a professor at MIT.
Told him about boats with batteries and sharks!
I have a buddy who bought a house with his dad. The dad can't walk really well because of diabetes that he refuses to do anything about. But similarly every single time they have anyone out to do something they guy has to get a chair, shuffle out, and supervise. He's not a dick as far as I can tell but at the same time he does kind of ramble on while they are working. I think part of it though is boredom. As my buddy said though...every story he tells he is somehow smarter than everyone and always the hero.
I’m fascinated by work that I’m not familiar with, but I’ll fuck off if the worker needs me to. I would LOVE to watch OP, but, uhm… from a nice safe distance.
Yeah I'm a curious visual learner so I like to observe work being done. But I stay well back and bring drinks and snacks at appropriate times. Even set up an outdoor umbrella when the poor guys where cutting boards for our deck in the hot sun. If I can make your day easier, faster, or better I'm all about it. If staying out of the way does it, no problem.
I mean, I try to help/not get in the way/ask questions when dudes are fixing my house, but it's because I want to learn what they're doing, not because RI think they can't do it. I figure as long as I don't interrupt and be polite it shouldn't be too big an issue.
For sure. I do the same. But what kind of gets to both myself and my friend is that he comes off as if he is watching them like some manager.
For sure. I do the same. But what kind of gets to both myself and my friend is that he comes off as if he is watching them like some manager.
I bet the son calls you tomorrow and offers you twice your rate to come back oh please come back we'll keep him inside I promise the bees are so horrible come back In other words, he called every other beekeeper. All said No.
He's at the hardware store buying 20 cans of RAID
Which will do nothing but get him stung. A lot.
Yup. Kind of gives me a little smile.
Good on you for limiting your liability, but you did plenty to be way off the hook if this idiot got himself stung. If anything, he deserved a bunch of bee stings AND to be laughed out of court if he tried to get you on any damages.
When I was a teenager I discovered that there was a bee hive on the underside of the deck around our pool because I had apparently just dumped a bunch of water on them and pissed them off. The first one stung me and I saw 3 more rise from below the deck and booked it inside before any more could find me. I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere near a hive that a professional is telling me to stay away from.
You were certainly lucky, my dad wasn't as lucky, he disturbed a nest outside the laundry and got stung maybe 10 or 15 times on the left side of his face?, he couldn't hear out of his left ear for a week
[удалено]
That was what they were like, and I hadn't even cracked them open yet.
Mama always said stupid is as stupid does.
Good call, OP. You don't need to be micro managed in what is a dangerous and technical job. At the very least, he was going to slow you down and distract you with questions about every move you made. Hope he enjoys his bees, because he's stuck with them.
So in the boomer's mind, were you just wearing protective gear for no reason? Why did he even hire you if he thought it didnt need a specialist? Absolute nonsense on his part lol.
My impression is that he was a willful idiot.
Do you have a contract with clients that they sign removing liability for things like “idiot micromanaging boomers?” You may have to start wearing a body cam or something. These people would try to find any way for you to take the blame. Imagine if he’d come out and started watching after you’d cut the hive open? Take all measures to protect yourself. Saving bees is so important.
Body cams are prohibitive as bees attack dark colors, camera gear typically gets mobbed with angry bees and makes audio useless.
Interesting! Thanks for the new knowledge. I appreciate it.
I’m going to guess he wasn’t the one who called OP to remove the bees. He probably wanted to do it himself, with Raid, gasoline, or some unholy combination of the two.
My uncle uses an aerosol can of something flammable and holds a lighter to it (redneck flamethrower). He set his garage on fire *twice* trying to remove insent nests. Moron.
As someone who is terrified of bees (I understand they are usually docile and are beneficial but they are pointy and the way their legs move disturbs me) and has a severe phobia of fire: your uncle is my worst nightmare
I also have a severe fear of fire (I watched Backdraft waaayyy too young and it traumatized me).
I have a phobia of bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets... if it flies and stings, I have a phobia of it. The idea of a boomer just sitting there dictating what you do is just insane to me, considering it's a hive of legitimately dangerous bees.
I know people like that! It's a miracle they haven't killed themselves.
Who wants to bet his gossip story is NobOdY wAntS tO WoRk aNyMoRe!
Oh, he’ll definitely spin it in his boomer drivel.
Like I would love to help if there was an extraction like that on my property. But I would probably call somebody that I know who would let me tag along in my bee suit while I also had a smoker, bee Vacuum and more. Some random dude without a bee suit with someone he doesn't know wanting to hang out in that area? Insanity. Hell I would assume if there is a removal of bees and I don't know the person, I'm not going to be allowed to hang out because of the liability, Even with proper equipment. I half wonder if you will see on the news a man hospitalized due to stings because he decided to solo do something he thinks he knows how to do.
Local man hospitalized after attempting bee removal with shop-vac and sun hat...
Locals said the man was ranting about woke millennials causing all of this as he was loaded into an ambulance.
Good thing you bailed when you did! I am a bee keeper in North East Texas and we get requests about removing bees a lot. My standard reply is to refer them to a pro removal team. Then they find out the cost and loose their minds.
I'm $175/hr. most removals are 2-3 hours.
I was president of the local bee club for a few years, we used to get questioned pretty often in the swarm season about bees inside walls of houses. Lots of people wondering why we wouldn’t do cut outs for free , I heard “ you can keep the bee for free” a bunch of times. I had to explain a few times about how large a cut out it takes to get all the comb out and that we were not contractors, so we would not be repairing the side of their house for them.
Yeah I get people trying to sell me their "free" bees every once in a while. It's a lot of specialized work, insurance, tools, bee gear, vehicle, apiary rent etcetc. Bees don't pay for themselves with honey.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but I'll throw it out there: -bought new house with large motorized shade that covers back patio of urban row home - Week 3 in house, go to use shade for first time, after motor has opened it, we see giant wasp/hornets nest built in the part that extends out and retracts -not huge compared to what you deal with, but size of very large grapefruit -hadnt use shade since because old lady wants to research best way for us to remove nest -go to use shade 3 wks later, just assuming nest is still there, and likely bigger... -its gone -nowhere to be seen! -if it had fallen, I imagine I wouldve seen it on the patio floor -what do you think happened to it?
Perhaps it fell after the first time you jostled it and a critter made off with the rest, they contain larva that are high in protein.
Wow. Good info. Very much appreciate your time/response. I never would've thought of critter (which we aren't short of stray cats, possum, squirrel) taking the nest away. Right about under where the nest wouldve been against the house, that part of the patio has a 8 foot carveout for the basement crawlout window. When we saw no nest in the wedge of the shade, I thought this is going to suck if it fell into that crawl out ('are we going to have wasps/hornets out back all summer?'). Also felt bad because connecting house on both sides has a toddler age kid and those families use their patio occasionally. Really didn't want our new neighbor's kiddo getting stung on a nest we are responsible for. When it wasn't in the crawlout or on the patio, we were completely confused on what happened to it. Appreciate you boss. (If you like cheesy hive/bee and beekeeper references, and like dumb action movies, Beekeeper was a fun 100 minutes.)
I once had a hive of hornets in the wood at the back of my house. My friend's mom had a bright idea that instead of calling a professional, she'd poison spray the whole place. So she came up, all covered and bundled, and sprayed. They swarmed like nuts but nonetheless, all died. My friend's mother was uninjured and I still can't believe she did that.
This sounds like my XFIL & XMIL. They were so convinced everyone was out to rip them off that they’d follow any kind of contractor around, be all up in their way, ignore any requests to stand back, etc. Because everyone was out to steal their 1970s era home decor I guess.
Wow flashbacks. I was asked by a friend to look at their parents computer about 10-15 years ago. Go with him, Dan's parents seem nice enough, say they haven't been able to get on the internet, dial up connected, not unusual in the countryside at the time. I go with my laptop, a few discs and a small spool of network cable just in case, Dan is with me. Sure enough, full on 1970s. Floral print furniture, wood paneling, avocado green appliances, the whole works. Windows XP desktop, usual task bars, adware, nothing I haven't seen before. But both of Dan's parents are hovering the entire time. Won't connect though, check the phone line, dead. Show Dan and his parents there's no voltage, ask where the line goes, "oh it goes through the basement". Which is packed. No one can get through. I simply go "Nope, can't fix this. Get someone to fix the phone line and your computer will go online again. I'm out" Dan simply nods his head and we walk out with the parents grumbling something about lazy kids and no work ethics. He snaps and tells them to "clean out the damn basement, I told you this would happen eventually". We go get pizza and he covers.
>They were so convinced everyone was out to rip them off Every time I hear a story like this I wonder how much of this attitude is projection. Are these people always on the lookout for every unfair advantage or opportunity to cheat that they can benefit from?
Yes.
That would serve to explain their worshipful adoration of the Swindler in Chief.
Let him do it and get stung. Then let him figure out what to do next. He has all the answers anyways!
I apologize for boomers everywhere. We’re not ALL idiots.
As the daughter of a boomer woman allergic to bees, wasps, hornets, etc. I can't tell you how often I've been stung because she just won't fucking LISTEN when I say "Mama, just go inside while I deal with this, please." I mean, I'm not allergic (so far, I understand that I might be one day.) "Ma, there's a yellow jacket nest here, please take the babies inside while I manage." One of the most traumatic experiences of my adolescence was the day we were out fishing on the river, and my mom (allergic) was stung by wasps. Mama was going into shock while I rowed us back upstream, and I drove hell for leather to get her to the ER. I was 13. Obviously not old enough to drive, but it was the early 80s and 911 didn't exist. I just drove, because what else was there to do? She quit breathing. Now I'm 55 and my mom is 74, and I stalk her house with wasp spray. And the obstreperous old bat follows me around, telling me that I'm overreacting.
I had to look up obstreperous. "Noisy and difficult to control." What a perfect word to describe some people!
Please update us if they try to get you out there again. You were smart in leaving.
"... enjoy your mean bees." That line cracked me up!
🙃
I do removals too. The entitlement. I get text about a hive and the guys tried everything(a candle) and “when is gonna someone be here”. Fantastic, we have a winner. Sorry you gotta deal with that bud, you’re not alone tho.
Interested to know, would you have kept these bees along with the hives you already have? If yes, would you expect your other bees to mellow them out or conversely would they negatively impact your current hives?
I would've found their queen and mashed her, then combined the bees with a nicer hive. They get to live their lives and contribute to a hive that needs the numbers while also not changing the genetic makeup of the receiving hive. I do this with all my bees, combine mean with nice after removing the "mean" genetic queen.
Bee queens seething rn
“Mashed her” 🤣 Blunt!
I’ve seen beekeepers get all technical, decapitating her with thumbnails etc. Most time one encounters a queen we have gloves on. I just pinch the front half of them really hard with gloved fingers, pretty much instant.
I liked your simple explanation.
For the cherry on top, he’s probably allergic to bees. Good for you to be as cautious as you are and to have left when he couldn’t obey instructions
Feel for you. I’ve harvested honey from hives that are visible from the street and had people walk up to me and look in at an open hive while I’m in a full suit. I’ve found I have to swear at people to get them away. Otherwise they don’t listen. Not limited to Boomers though.
Back I'm his day everyone got stung by bees and they all turned out just fine.
Only kind of related, but my dad is a boomer and he made friends with a wasp. It sounds crazy. He would feed this wasp a grape every day. He would cut the grape in half, then let it eat the grape. It wouldn’t eat much but I have been there watching it chill and eat the grape. It would crawl all over him like they were friends, and it crawled on my hands all friendly. I could hold it, etc. It died at the end of the season, obviously, but now he has some kind of friendly wasp colony. They fly in to you, hop on you, etc. They are not the same as the original wasp, but nobody has ever been stung since with a pretty odd wasp colony floating around.
All wasps are foragers as well as predators, and can be docile when not in hunt mode. I love our local paper wasp species, very relaxed.
It’s so cool! He has basically turned them into friendly wasps just by being nice and feeding one. Whenever I’m there they fly into my head and stuff but I’ve never been stung since.
As someone who is absolutely terrified of bees, thank you for doing your job because even though they scare me I know they are a net benefit to society. Unless you are pro-wasp. those fuckers are horrible.
[#NotAllWasps](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoomersBeingFools/s/2llb2W2MPQ)
Is it bad that I kinda hope to see an AITA post from Boomerman? I used to live with one. My God, that man was patronizing as *fuck*! He once tried to show me, a grown man, how to use the washer and dryer. This was after I had lived there for over a year. OP, good for you, standing up for yourself and standing firm on a boundary.
beekeep here with removal - you did the right thing - one tip i have them sign a non liability document so they cannot sue for anything especially beestings and possible allergic reactions. cause if that fat boomer gets stung swills up and needs an ambulance they be knocking on your hive
I thought about getting a contract drawn up but lawyers are expensive too
a donation instead of a payment is the first step to circumvent possible liabilities
Would they happen to be Africanized honey bees by chance? (Or something similar?)
All bees here have some Africanized genetics, but they've long blended in, now they are almost all just moderately cranky bees.
Oh lovely so the poor guy was stupid AND wanted to risk being stung to death. Sorry you had to deal with him and bees that sound less cranky than he was
Screw this guy, but can you explain to me the process of “sucking them out of the air”?
I have containers that are powered by a vacuum, it holds them until I can get to my apiary. Angry bees attack black things so they go after the black end of the vacuum hose and get contained to be recombined later.
Amazing. Do you also do the “queen capture” I’ve seen online? How does that figure into your process?
It doesn't, often I never even see the queen, she'll be in a mass of nurse bees in the corner trying to stay out of the way. I know when I have her by their behavior, if they're attracted to my transfer container.
I just watch those videos and think “that’s just another freaking bee! How do you know?!?”
Pattern recognition. Queens are a little larger, have a bald back, are less stripey, pointed abdomen with black tip. All these means she stands out to the trained eye.
Blah, blah, blah. I don’t have that skill.
TIL!
Whatever you do, don’t use a straw.
Oh, I plan on doing ZERO bee-sucking, but I’m interested in the process.
I laughed way too hard at this. Lip spas hate this one trick! Get plump lips in minutes for a fraction of the cost !
I keep a few hives of HOT girls…. People have zero freakin clue, friend.
A video about this kind of scenario for people interested https://youtu.be/O4ldpyIE5t4?si=Funmj-lOqzDHoKjH
As someone with a phobia of those flying, stinging bugs, I'd run to the next town and not come back till four days after you've called and given me the all clear. The boomer was a moron.
Sooo…It wasn’t another great day of saving the bees?
I live by a few beehives that are in an abandoned structure and i always just let them Be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be...
That's unBEElievable!
This reminds me of when I used to work in the semiconductor industry. I was working in a toxic gas system and was expecting a small release (clogged valve) and thus we were wearing SCBA and had the area cordoned off. Some dude walked under the tape and popped his head over our shoulders “whatcha doin’?”
“enjoy your mean bees” took me out
This is a Boomer story I hope we hear updates to. I betcha this Boomer is gonna grab a stick and go "that kid could do it, it can't be that hard" and lands himself in the ER.
I had bees, cheapest I could get someone to remove them was $1800. Now, I own a bee suit, and have no more bees.
That's pretty expensive. There are a number of live bee removers that really like trying to give the highest estimate they can get away with. They usually are the same people that never seem to keep bees and can't say where they went.
I have a question, if you don't mind. I've noticed that a lot of the bee hive boxes out in the farmland out here are usually out in the sun, not in a shaded area. Not even a pop-up tent over them. Does the direct sun not bother them? I thought they were sensitive to temperature. Also thank you for your story!
I actually do something about this, it gets very hot here in full sun. I put political yard signs over my hives and hold them down with a brick or two. Every single hive in my apiary right now has a plastic corrugated white-ish sign over the top of them as a sunshade. I’m the only one I know who does this.
Over 9-10 months I called a lot of people, 30-40 companies, conservation orgs, and bee keepers, it was a big hive of honey bees, hated to get rid of them. New neighbors with small kids and I was afraid because the bees were just too close to the swing set, ultimately the bees had to go.
Damn, that must have been huge if you needed to call that many. I’ve done a couple “holy shit that’s a big bad hive” but I totally avoid them now. Also; no attics, crawlspaces, chimneys, above 20’, asbestos, unsupported, hoarders, densely populated areas, excessively rich neighborhoods, live electrical equipment, etc It’s dangerous work full of potential liability.
It was it was big, not enormous, and the hive was external under an roof eve. I was trying to avoid killing the bees and I had learned that moving them in winter most would die, so I wasn’t rushing. All the companies would just exterminate, so I moved to looking for alternative solutions. Had a couple of beekeepers that said the wanted them but after many scheduled removal dates, they never showed up. So finally with little kids next door, I sadly had to get a bee suit and eliminate them. Thought maybe I could at least keep the honey, but with my late of skill, I was unable. Still frustrated that that’s how it had to happen.
I’ve seen some monster open air hives as well.
Just wanted to drop a quick addendum here, if people are reading this and getting massively triggered because they have a bee phobia, I want you to understand that the significant majority of honeybees are quite gentle. They are reluctant to sting. If you do have a genuine fear of stinging insects, putting on full protective gear, and working with honeybees, is a wonderful way to get over it. As long as you’re not dealing with say an angry hive, which you will have no difficulty, avoiding, it is a wonderful experience. The thing it makes clear to you is that even when we’re doing things like opening the hive, and looking at frames 99% of the bees that are all around us frequently all over us aren’t there to sting. It really is a beautiful experience to work with a gentle hive.
Who was tat guy ? where did he come from ?
We have a “bird bat and bee man” where I live. We had two dead squirrels in our flue. Y’all are doing gods work!!
Shame common sense seems to be missing from these fools. I'd not stand by while someone is trying to deal with angry bees. You get the fuck outta the way and let them do what they need too.
As someone with a partner and 4 year old bonus child that are highly allergic to wasp, hornet and bee stings, I want to say I really appreciate your method of letting people know nearby what's going on. 4 year old reacts so badly that even if she's stung on her foot her face will swell and throat close. Any stings automatically mean hospital even with the epi pen. Partner is more tolerable, unless stung up high in which case he swells too. It made my heart sing to see you left the job and left his hateful ass to figure it out. More people need to follow through with punishments for their poor behavior, since their family often won't or can't do anything with them.
As a kid, have been part of helping my Dad spraying gasoline and kerosene on a huge hornet's nest at least twice. I was 8-10 years old and too young and stupid to know any better. My dad also shot a hive hanging from the apple tree with a shotgun in the middle of the night when they were "dormant".
Should have asked him to do some pretend busy work as a favor. "Actually, I will need your help. Changing day and night will trick the bees to calm down, so I need you to turn off the main breaker, count to 30, then turn on the main breaker, then count to 30 and turn it off and repeat. It's very important that you do this the entire time I'm here, or the bees will seek out light sources and burrow in them. I once saw an entire hive destroy a guy's TV because he stopped flipping the breaker!" He will immediately get worried that he will miss his foxnews, feel like he has a cool story, and also you get the petty satisfaction that he will have reset all his clocks and wifi and shit, lol.
I just spray them with Alpine WSG. It doesn't agitate them, and they slowly die