bees

I'm on Old State Road 99, about five miles out from the campground, and I just passed what appeared to be a downed beehive, with all the bees still milling about it. You just saw the pic of it in the previous post. Incredible, eh?

A long time ago, my buddy Sam and I used to make it our mission to destroy wasp nests. Our last and greatest mission involved a gigantic nest tucked inside the overhang of a neighbor's house. These weren't the regular wasps with their tiny, frilly little nests. No: these were German wasps-- bigger, more tactically coordinated, and superior architects to boot.

Sam had a marvelous slingshot, so he used it to fire a heavy pebble at the nest which was, in my childhood memory of the event, as huge as a jumbo-sized grapefruit.

Direct hit-- then disaster: a black cloud of German wasps came pouring out of the hole Sam had punched into the nest; we turned and ran like hell. Miraculously, we weren't stung.

Both of us knew we had to finish the job, so when we got back to the nest, Sam gave me the slingshot. You can guess what happened: direct hit, cloud of wasps, run like hell.

Being chased twice by a cloud of angry wasps is a hint that even two dense guys like us could take: time to change tactics. I don't remember which of us thought it up-- might've been Sam-- but we shifted to heavier weaponry: water balloons.

The tactic worked. We filled a mess of balloons up, bombarded that nest, and after a few hits the thing dropped from its corner with a heavy splat, just like soggy newsprint.

No Buddhists, we: elated, we charged over to the nest and stomped the crap out it, demolishing the little chambers, crushing the white-shrouded larvae, and generally ignoring what adult wasps remained. Ah, victory was sweet.

I was reminded of all that just now... but now, as an adult, what I was thinking when I passed that insectile crowd was: Thank God these are just honeybees. Had they been wasps or hornets, I would never have gotten that close to take a pic.


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