365 Days, Day 40

“When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.” (Joseph Joubert)

“Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love.” (Cole Porter)

I’m sure we all have a bee-story.

Ariel remembers the first time she was stung by a bee, she was about four years old and was walking into the Spar shop when she stepped on a bee [who goes to the shops barefoot?? That’s like something out of my nightmares].

Tom’s bee-story isn’t a bee-story: it’s a wasp-story. He was up on the ladder changing the light bulb in the security light outside the garage. The light is in the eaves of the double-story part of the house. So we were watching him from the upstairs play-room (as one does). We noticed that very close to the light was a wasp nest. We shouted from the window to him, to be careful. He brushed our warning off (as he does, being “ ‘n mann”). The first wasp got rather annoyed at this large intruder so it stung Tom. The rest of the wasp family followed suit. There was Tom up at the top a double-story ladder being stung by an angry pladge of wasps, whilst we were hysterical inside the window. I’m sorry that we laughed Tom, but it was really funny from our vantage point. Tom got his own back on the ferocious little creatures later by ‘taking-out’ the wasps nest.

When Kyle, Roarke and Ariél were quite small, we had a grist of bees in our garden. Tom’s dad (he and Nona were staying in the granny flat at the bottom of garden then) was concerned that the children might be harmed so he reasoned that the thing to do was to smoke the bees out. Most of the bees dashed off to more hospitable gardens, but some were stunned or dying. Our dogs, Joey and Nina were delighted with these snacklets being strewn at their feet and gobbled as many as they could. Their snouts swelled up to round little balls. Once again we were hysterical. Lulu, being the princess-dog that she is, only consumed enough to give her lips a bee-tox pout.

I had another picture for today and was writing my blog, when I found this beautiful deceased bee on our conservatory floor. [No, I am not going to stuff the bee, Tom!] I have photographed it – in memory of all our bee stories.

Please share yours!