Bee-(w)itched

I have had an ongoing long love-hate relationship with my bees. They have been with me from the start when I bought this paradise place a long time ago. I have done numerous posts about the bee(s) in my bonnet, to bee exact!

Now we know how important the bees are. They are the bees knees of the animal kingdom. Without them the world, as we know it, will stop existing.

I love the bees except that they invade my house and make it impossible to co-exist. I don’t particularly mind them buzzing around, but some of my guests are super scared or allergic, which makes them beehave in a way that aggravates my bees.

I have tried many proactive things to address my bee problem.

• Flea powder
  This really works well. All you have to do is to buy a tin of dog flea powder. Take the top off. Insert a stick into the opening and making a few holes in the tin with a sharp object. You then shake the powder into the openings where the bees like making hives. Repeat every few years. I have actually found that the bees never return to these spaces. Ever. The methodology is simple. The “verkenner” bees go and look for a new place to make a hive. The flea powder kills them and they can’t go and tell the rest of their tjommies about the stunning prospect. Also remember, bees are attracted to old hives and no matter how you scrub and sanitise, they will still smell the old hive and come back to squat.
  
  Now I felt bad about using flea powder, which is poison, but argued that it only kills one bee at a time. Di pointed out to me that over time, I kill a lot of bees….
  
  
• Maggie’s Magic Muti
  This also works well and is a bit more bee friendly. The premise is that you make it smell so bad that it scares them off. The only problem may be that it scares your guests off as well! In a squeezy squirt bottle with a relatively big opening you make a nice concoction of:
  • Oil and viniger (half your bottle)
  • Jayes fluid ( quarter bottle)
  • Garlic
  • Cyane pepper
  • Water
  • Shake it up.
    This has to be re-applied every month. This is where my problem comes in…I am very forgetful…it smells bad….
    
• Placing bee hives around the house where the bees can safely do their thing
  This did not help at all. Other bees came and thought, Yeaaah, nobody home and moved in. So currently, after a year of bee freedom, I have a hive that is nicely settled back into Jaaps. Rent free.

The way forward

After being attacked by my very own bees, I am not so enamoured with them any more. But I definitely are much more scared of them. It is like being bitten by your own trusted dog. I am very disappointed in them.

Vincent and Kinesh are busy talking to my bees, but it does not seem to work, so the next step is smoking their little buds out of my cabin. No matter how gently an operation it purport to be, it is always a huge sticky mess. And the Queen always plays hard to get!! And it ussualy involves quite an amount of reconstructive building.

Some tells me that bees in your space is a blessing and a sign of the happy environment you create. I think I need to start getting a bit more unhappy-ish.

Any other ideas????

Tagged with: Bees