Posted July 13, 2008

In the past week I have learned a lot about the birds and the bees. Mostly, I learned that if your house is home to a bee hive you couldn't care less about birds. Or much of anything else.

Except how to get rid of them.

As it turns out, this is fairly straightforward.

Move.

Otherwise you will merely perpetuate a very bad business arrangement. Bees seem to think the fact that they are cranking out honey in the walls of your house at a rate fast enough to pave your driveway makes up for the fact that they are not paying rent. Bees also have this strange idea that even though they may have to share the honey with ants, raccoons and termites, they don't have to share it with you.

If you don't believe that, try helping yourself to some.

Do not do this, however, if the bees are Africanized. African bees will attack mercilessly, mostly because they dislike our foreign policy. Saying, "I'm a Democrat," may not help because English can be difficult for immigrants bees to master.

Things are not made easier by having a wife like mine, who is deathly afraid of bees. This is silly, in my opinion, because the only purpose it serves is keeping her from getting stung to within an inch of her life. When you have bees living in your house, however, the odds of something like this happening are about one chance in one.

At her insistence, which I still think was misplaced, I called a pest control company. They performed surgery on the walls and dug out the hive. Leaving the honey in place, they explained, just attracts a new queen bee, though how my sister-in-law would know honey was there is beyond me.

With the bees gone, my wife had time to notice there is a hole in the wall the size of a case of Fruit Loops, a hole I will have to patch up unless a miracle occurs. Say, for instance, the bees returning.

Does anyone know how to say "Free rent" in African?

©2008 Jay Douglas