Carroll the Bee Man arrived last night around 6 p.m. He's a old Florida boy who has done bee-work all his life. He really knows his stuff! He first went over to the window and plucked out a bee in order to determine which kind of bees we had.
He stung himself with it and then gave us a beeology lesson on bee anatomy. "Yep, that's a fiery sting, a fiery sting," he said. "Them aren't honeybees. You've got Africanized bees." Wah wah wah waaaaah. He came inside and took a look from our bathroom window. He estimated that we had five to seven thousand Africanized killer bees. They're called Killer bees beecause they release a pheromone when they sting, and other bees follow it to help with the attack. After multiple stings you go into shock and die from renal failure. Yum.
He went back to his old pickup truck and got out his protective headgear, smoker, and ShopVac! After a brief smoking to calm them down, he fired up the shopvac and slurped the bees away, little bit by little bit! He was beeing careful so that he could capture the queen and put her in a special little container. After a while he took the board off the window and we could see light!
Partway done... (view from INSIDE the bathroom, where neighbor Andy and I were documenting everything on our cameras). A good view of part of the comb:
Carroll asked Brad to bring him a plate so we could save the comb. By this time Brad was fearless and outside with Carroll. Andy our next door neighbor went out, too, to videotape from the outside. Andrew, our backyard neighbor, came out to see it too. Nothing brings men together like danger and food.
After about an hour of work, Carroll was done. He said he only got stung twice, which is a miracle since his shirt was super thin and didn't cover all of his skin! He said one bee got inside his shirt and stung him, and the other went through the shirt. But only twice!
Brad gave most of the comb away since we weren't going to eat much of it. We cut up little pieces to try-- tasted just like honey, but runnier and suuuuper sweet.
Carroll did capture the queen and put her in a special vial to give to a friend so the friend can start his own colony. The other bees stayed put in the ShopVac. There are still 20-30 bees left which he said was normal. They'll salvage what they can of the wax they left on the house, then will take off to join another colony. He said we've devastated them by taking their queen, so they won't stick around long. And since he claimed he was late in showing up, he only charged us half price. For $125, it was worth every penny. We offered to feed him dinner and pie but he got a call for another job in the middle of everything and had to leave right away.
Seriously. How do these things come to us? The nice thing is that we are certainly beecoming more laid-back about such events. We just roll with the Florida-isms and try to make the beest of it!
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