YSaC, Vol. 770: To bee or not to bee?
I’m sorry, did I say TWO bee? We’ve got PLENTY more than that!
For some reason, there’s LOTS of people who think that there’s someone out there who LOVES removing bees’ nests for free, and all they have to do is ask:
“We have a nest of honey on the dumpster at the Church. Bee keepers want $500 to $2000 for removal. Looking for someone to take them for free.”
Bee’s
Bee’s need to be gathered. Call Church and leave messaage and someone will return your call.
Free Bee Hive
Seriously I have a honey bee’s nest in my back yard. I cannot afford to have it removed So I am hoping to find someone who raises Honey Bee’s and could use them. I need them gone asap because my daughter is allergic to them. Please email me
Free BEE’s
Possibly Millions off Bee’s have made a home for the last 10 years in a tree outside my home.
If you are a beekeeper, honey factory, hobbyist, prankster or masochist…. come and get em!
They are in the trunk of a large tree… they have two entrances. the largest is about 12-15 feet up so you will need a ladder.
Bee suit recommended ( unless you are the above mention masochist) as this is a SWARM.
I would prefer that after you take what you want that you attempt to nuke the hive. If necessary I will buy the poison if you will hose them down.
Apparently bee stings also damage your ability to correctly fail to use apostrophes.
Some people even think that because they are giving you the privilege of removing their bees, you owe them honey:
Got bees!
We have a minimum of four active hives with easy access, and need them removed- hopefully not exterminated, but defer to the experts. Help! Horses and other livestock live close, so we need to be insured of their safety. And while we’re asking- we’d like to keep at least some of the honey. The majority of the guys don’t seem to be real aggressive, but again, what do I know? Please reply asap- the boss says next call is the exterminator! Call ###-###-####- leave message- I’ll get right back to you.
One half of Honey
I’ll share honey from my bee hive if you have place to keep the hive.
I know where is good place to “park” the hive .
Call for details ###-###-####
Free Bees to a Good Hive
Ok here’s the deal. Several months ago, I purchased some bees off the internet; at last I could fulfill my life-long dream of beekeeping. The joy brought to me by each and every bee made each day a little sweeter, and for a while life was a reflection of that which I’ve always desired.
But thanks to my oversensitive roommate *cough*named Walcott *cough*, the homeowner’s association revised ‘The Rules’ to prohibit beekeeping. Long story short, I told the HOA and Walcott to buzz off.
I have 6 pounds of live bees that I am unable to keep at my new apartment.
I’ll give them to the right person free of charge, my only condition is, that I wish to receive approx. 1 gallon of honey from my adopted bees, per year.
–Must pick-up
Stupid Walcott. But that’s NOTHING next to THIS guy’s neighbor:
free bees,as well as firewood(worry bout bees,big tree,no worry stung)
tree fell down on my truck and families tahoe(which was totalled out) douche bag owner didnt have know home owners insurance on his property(address listed is my address,this tree is directly next door) vacant lot,double lots),we just need it gone,and sure alot of the tree could be cut out for firewood without eving disturbing the bees,i done killed alot of them myself,aint but probably a quarter of them left),for this is a very tall and full size tree so cut what you want,and take what you want,for you dont need to worry about getting stung or anything,there will be far then enough distance for you to cut wood without worrying about that. JUST WOULD LIKE SOME HELP OUT SOMEHOW(OF COARSE WITHOUT ME PAYING,CAUSE HE DONE DAMAGED MY TRUCK,AND TOTALED OUT ANOTHER VEHICLE WHICH COST MY FAMILY A 500 OUT OF POCKET DEDUCTABLE FOR WHAT HIS TREE DONE. which i know he didnt ask for to happen or done himself,but my gma has lived here going on 50 yrs,and i know the guy,hes a slumm,so whatevery way can help would appreciate,city said they aint doin nothing,when he hits his date middle next month to do something about it,then theyll take it to court,probably get continued time time again,and i still got a tree laying on my property as well. so whatever you can do to help thankyou,i talked to the guy,offered getting rid of bees and cutting up so people could come by and just grab up their free firewood as means to help out myself,for small fee,and hes just beeing the same slumm for what got to know him for over many years. so come get,i would be deeply appreciated,IF NEED HELP,ILL GET IN THERE WITH YOU,DONT HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH THAT. THANKYOU FOR ANY HELP ALONG IN THE PROCESS MIGHT BE ABLE TO PROVIDE.
Bees be with you.
Thanks for the links, Tami, Stephanie, Rachel, Audra, Allison (I know this world is killing you), Judi, Jen, and Angele!
ARG! Thanks, dan, for the ear worm! Is Elvis Costello on the list of guilty pleasures, or can I admit to liking him openly?
I wish I could have bees, but I don’t live in an apartment. 8)
What kind of person orders six pounds of LIVE BEES if they live in an apartment?
Although it could be interpreted that after Sparky told Walcott and the HOA to “buzz off”(cute) Sparky was forced to relocate and lost the bees anyway.
He’s just showing how effective telling people to “buzz off” really is. Not at all, apparently.
SJ, that’s how I read it, too. Sparky got fed up with roommate and HOA and went to live someplace else. Still lost the bees, but gained the roommate’s absence.
And that last one is making me twitch.
I think the writer if that last one twitching as he wrote it. It reads like:
“I done drunk m’self off muh ass cuz’a this tree what done fell on muh driveway that’s muh neighbor’s fault but he don’t do nothin’ cuz he a slumm an’ all. So ah’m a try’n a git some cash offa Craigslist for muh bar tab, an’ I know that tree’s gotta be worth somethin’, but there’s the bees I done mostly kilt, so I’ll tell people ’bout ’em so’s they don’t worry, an’ sheee-yut, I said free firewood there, that won’t make me no money, I’ll write “small fee”, and if I ‘splain about the slumm enough, folks’ll help me out, Gawd I’m drunk.”
[apiary corey] Only need a few ounces of bees to grow a good sized hive.
This is part of what makes for the success in the bee biz.
Related note, the nieghboring county to my south is one of the mail order hubs for honey bee queens. Which means they are very focused on africanized bees. Once a county has a significant africanized population, you cannot mail order any more. You can still produce honey, but you cannot sell bees. Beekeepers have found that the africanized bees take much more work, as you have to go very slowly and surely. But, this is made up for in increased honey production.
Similar note, there’s a bunch of research going on in Mexico where they are breeding the “aggressiveness” out of the africanized bees. Which then gets you higher volume at “ordinary bee” collection rates (the ‘why’ african bees were introduced in the first place).
It seems that “afticanized bees” are aggressive is due to Cape Bees, who live parasitically off other hives.
Last bit of be trivia. There are dozens of native bees in the Americas; the honey bee is not one of them, it was brought over from Europe.
[/corey]
Very true. In fact most of the native bees (which don’t produce any honey) are several times MORE efficient at pollination than honey bees are. Specifically bumble bees, which are pollinating machines.
Elvis Costello is awesome!
You know what’s unfair, though? There are no less than three “Allison” songs out there. How many “Meredith” songs are there? None..nada…zip…zilch.
Not. Fair.
I mean, we all know how easily Meredith flows off the tongue. And it rhymes with……………….uh…….I’ll get back to you on that one.
Meredith rhymes with….with. So that’s a start. Ummm…yeah. Beyond that I’ve got pith and that’s it. I’m sure there must be more.
Calling HamCan! You are needed to write a Meredith song!
Oh Meredith,
You did get hitched with,
A man named Eveleth
(surname)
You mean Like this Manda???
She HypnoDog
By: Meradeth
The avatar is sticklike and evil
Her lips are pink crayon
Wicked temptress knows how to be snarky
The Not.A.Lion roars, “Get rid of your bees”
The rite of the praying Spice Christ
Kiss the strings of the Weavable
Spellbound searching for the couch snake
A grave bowel surrenders to cat math, cat math
(Well, no one really got the Meradeth, Megadeth pun so…)
I almost did, Meredithy doats and dozy doats, and then I started to do The old grey Meredith but thought I might lose an arm or other vital part…
But then…light bulb!
Flew in from Miami Beach YSaC
Didn’t get to snark last night
Oh, the way the small bag of girls on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I’m back in Meredith’s car
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in Meredith’s car, yeah
Been away so long I hardly knew the memes
Gee, it’s good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to hatch my schemes
Honey, Al Sharptons’ on the phone
I’m back in Meredith’s car
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in Meredith’s
Back in Meredith’s
Back in the Meredith’s car
Meridith – consider yourself lucky, the only Kelli(Kelly) song is the one from the tv show Cheers and it is beyond annoying.
I can add to that list:
Accidently Kelly Street. (Still beyond annoying) and
Kelly Watch the Stars. (Better)
Meredith, Meredith
She didn’t like Revenge of the Sith
But she’s got a thing for the Ham
In Mark Hammill’s can.
You guys are hilarious. Mudsy, I lol’ed and snorted water out my nose!
There’s a few random unknown songs about “Lori.” In one of them, Lori marries her high school sweetheart, it turns into a bitter, loveless marriage, she finds out he’s cheating on her, and then kills her husband and herself with a butcher knife.
Lori, she stabbed him in the heart
Forever they were part
She buried the blade in her throat, ooh oh.
Oh, the blood was all around
The end of a perfect love
It dried up in their clothes, ooh oh.
I still haven’t decided if this song is funny or creepy :-p
I’d have to go with creepy.
Heck, my name rhymes with Irene, Kathleen, Rosaleen and Billy Jean, all of which feature in songs. Mine? Noooo.
Although as a little taddle, I went by a short form that was featured in lots of songs. My peers skipped over the famous Little Richard song, bypassed the classic nursery rhyme, and stuck me with the butter commercial. Also, they invoked the name of a certain Brat Pack actress like it was a bad thing.
Pippin Galadriel Moonchild might not have been any worse.
And Jolene.
You can admit it to me, Windrose. My phone ringtone is “High Fidelity.”*
*Seriously.
Mine is “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Bees, Love and Understanding.”
Mine “American Pie”.
It’d be “Hello Goodbye” if the Beatles had their stuff available to download…
*Mine is
Astro, go get iRinger.
I used it to make ringtones out of a dozen of my favorite mp3s. Right now, I am using the Peter Gunn theme from the Blues Brothers. Formerly, I have used the Raiders March and the chorus of “Inspector Gadget”. It may be time to move on to something a little quieter and less silly. Or maybe I’ll turn it up a little with “Leave my Monkey Alone” or “Brand New Day”.
My ringtone for Honey is the theme from Gone with the Wind. My ringtone for my daughter is a David Bowie tune (she hasn’t had a phone in a couple years, so I forgot which one!) My ringtone for my son is the five tones from Close Encounters. And for everyone else it’s the aline Muppets going “Briiiiinnnng!” “Brrriiinnnng!” “Yup yup yup yup yup.” For one friend, it was the sound of a fax machine connecting, but every time she called, Mike and I would look around for the fax! LOL
Okay, I want the Muppet one. Erm… “aline”?
Or Manah-Manah…
I should look at my new Meatloaf tunes and see if any of them are suitable for conversion, too.
My ringtone for my wife is the Michael Myers halloween music, and everyone elses ringtone is Goodbye horses*.
*the creepy song from the cross dressing scene in silence of the lambs
I love cats.
Spam???? I think spam.
Edit: Edit: Nevermind.
Edit: but I do think he is teh spam.
Spam?
Oh, but I don’t speak Spamish!
Odd, the avatar does not resemble Alf at all . . .
Scene 1: Enter the Satist
Joey, the masochist, loves his satist counterpart…yet they have a dilemma. About five days ago Joey realized
I love cats.
Elvis Costello is definitely NOT a guilty pleasure. He just rocks. Especially his older punkier stuff. (Some of his recent balladry bores me) “Oliver’s Army” is a song that is a serious, serious earworm for me. Why, just mentioning it in a comment can get it stuck… oh damn.
Many adores for the Elvis Costello reference!
Oh, shitI mean, thanks, Dan! You’re totally right about “Oliver’s Army.”Elvis and his wife (Diana Krall) actually live in the same town as I do. I saw them at the grocery store about 4 years ago. He was kinda stuck up. but I love his music
Damn it, I was trying to choose a “Don’t suck” comment and I got distracted by watching Elvis Costello videos on YouTube. There went a half an hour.
I do believe that counts as an “OH SHINY!” moment.
I have those all the time. For example, last night:
“Ima cut up all these fresh tomatoes and make the yummy tomato sauce!”
“OH LOOK! Uncharted Waters Online is working again!” *Flails at computer for 3 hours*
“I was gonna do something, but can’t remember. Let’s oggle things at Amazon instead of trying to remember, YAY!”
Tomatoes: 🙁
This could explain the mysterious disappearance of bees recently. They’re sliding into The Twilight Zone.
I speak fluent Southern, so I understood most of that last one, but one thing (among many) puzzles me.
WTF is a “slumm”?
slumm = Sarcastic Lowdown Unbearable Miserly Man
*Waves*
So a slummlord is a Sarcastic Lowdown Unbearable Miserly Man Likely to Overdose on Recreational Drugs?
I had the same reaction, SJ. I know what a “slum” is, but it seems an odd thing to call an individual human being, no matter how badly-kept-up he is. Perhaps a “slumm” is a person who is slumming?
[reality]I guess he probably means slum lord[/reality]
[snark]They appear to be a shitty band with a MySpace page that I can’t access at work, but here’s a link. http://www.myspace.com/slummmusic. He must be a member.[/snark]
From the FreeRice vocabulary game, I have learned that a slummock is a messy person. A slumm is perhaps a person who’s too lazy to finish making the mess?
[corey]Actually, if you live in Texas (if I recall correctly) there IS a guy who will remove honey bees for free. He removes the bees for free and keeps the bees for his hives. I think there was another guy in California doing it too.
The problem is, most of these people probably have hornets, and the average person can’t be bothered to know the difference between a bee and hornet. Jerks.[/corey]
This message brought to you by the letters C, O, F, and E. F and E will be making a repeat visit to the show today as well.
I know the difference!
Hornets are harder to milk, right?
And they walk the streets at night. I’ll get my coat.
Hornets are the ones who are always bleating everywhere.
I thought Hornets were the ones who fought crime.
And play lackluster basketball.
And according to Google, the New Orleans Hornets’
cheerleadersdance squad is called the Honeybees.Kelli, that’s only the green ones.
I’ve never looked closely enough at a hornet to see his coloring. I’m terribly apiphobic and cnidophobic due to my allergy to insect stings.
Thanks for the hornet reference, Taco. [giant venomous winged insect corey] Due to a friend of mine who works in agricultural research, I now have sleepless nights over something called the Giant Asian Hornet/Giant Japanese Hornet. Check it out online if giant bugs with stinger venom that can dissolve your flesh don’t faze you. My friend lives in Oregon and I did not think that they were elsewhere in this country, but then last month something that was approximately the size of a jumbo shrimp (not exaggerating) and looked an awful lot like my friend’s pictures got into my apartment. Fortunately, I have a bug spray that has warnings for humans and domestic pets on it* that at least stunned it and enabled me to shoo it out the window. [/giant venomous winged insect corey]
Never thought I’d be wistfully reminded of the time the bat got into my place, but as large flying creatures go, the bat was a bit more benign.
*People can die from the stings from these things, so I figured it was worth the risk.
I probably would have went with a hammer after the bug spray rather than “shooing” it.
Hammer does not have a long enough handle. Also, it was near the window, which I prefer intact (the better to keep out giant venomous winged insects).
Pshaw. Use a sledge and hit the hornet with gentle force.
Probably should have kept the bat, they eat several times their own body weight in insects every night.
Lola, I think I am going to have nightmares for the rest of my life. And then any children I have in the future will inherit them, because the nightmares will be(e) that strong.
EB, you and your nightmares will be keeping me and my nightmares company.
If I hadn’t seen my friend’s pictures and known that these things exist, I would have wondered if I’d imagined The Hornet That Ate Tokyo. Unfortunately not. If it makes you feel any better, my friend and her colleagues fully admitted to screaming like little girls and running away (after snapping a quick photo because no one would believe them otherwise). Me? I don’t remember what noises I actually made, after the initial gasp and trying not to hyperventilate.
Heracleophorbia exists!
Without in any way meaning to downplay your nightmares, may I offer my own reacion…
Sweet Clothespin Jeebus Spice Christ, nature does some awesomely freaky stuff! How super highly efficient is it that the sting not only starts dissolving the food but also RINGS THE SMELLY DINNER BELL to call all its family to the food?! And when it attacks bees, they retaliate by overheating it which kills it.
And given that I saw several pics of one of these chilling on someone’s hand, they don’t seem any more inclined to sting than their smaller counterparts. So, yeah, control the buggers but I wonder what we might learn from the chemicals they secrete.
Yeah, Moira, the whole Bee Ball o’ Death that the bees do to get rid of them is amazing to me. They don’t kill it by suffocation, they do it by making it too hot. Wild.
They can’t be that big…
:Google break:
Sweet Clothespin Jeebus, that thing is a monster! It should be fighting Godzilla in a badly dubbed B-movie!
In addition to random snark and humor, Cracked.com also has a lot of articles about killer/mutant/generally nightmarish creatures. Oh what I have learned from The Internets…
SJ, for a ground-bound insect, it seems large but not ridiculous… for a FLYING insect, it’s just bloody insane. It’s bigger than some hummingbirds.
(I wonder how the hummingbirds feel about that…)
Moira, I’m sure the hummingbirds have something to say. And it can be translated into five languages!
For a more cuddly giant flying insect, I give you –the hummingbird moth!
They are the same general size and shape as a hummingbird, their wings even make a similar humming sound.
Not something somebody allergic to normal hornet stings really wanted to learn, I must admit.
On the plus size, hard for something that big to sneak up on you…
I never actually thought about whether giant bugs with stinger venom that can dissolve your flesh faze me. After half a second’s careful consideration, I’ve concluded that they do.
“Giant Asian Hornets on a Plane” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as you would hope.
But it does roll shivers down my spine. Ughghhghg….
Taco, “Giant Asian Hornets with Quarter-Inch Stingers* on a Plane” is scarier and accurate, but it’s not catchy either.
*Not making this up.
Oh you’re exagerating there Lola. They’re only a smidge over 1/5 of an inch. Like .04 inches.
Coming soon to a theater near you!
Giant Asian Hornets with Quarter-Inch Stingers on a Plane!
:plane cabin, passengers are screaming in terror. Dramatic music plays:
Samuel L. Jackson – “I’m tired of all these f***in’ Giant f***in’ Asian Hornets with f***in’ Quarter-Inch f***in’ Stingers on this f***in’ plane!”
:plane cabin, passengers are now strapped in and gagged. Dramatic music plays.:
Samuel L. Jackson – “Open the f***in’ door!”
:Plucky Sidekick opens cabin door causing air masks to drop down as dramatic music plays, the sudden pressure change sucks the Giant Asian Hornets with Quarter-Inch Stingers out of the plane. The Plucky Sidekick wrestles the door shut and then trips and impales self on a rolled-up in-flight magazine.:
Samuel L. Jackson – “Motherf***er!”
:Dramatic music plays:
I’d watch it.
There would be an easy way to kill all the bees in that plane. Just crash the plane into a mountain; the fire should incinerate the bees. Then again, the crash might also kill Samuel L. Jackson as well….do we want to take that risk?
Mace Windu already died, we don’t need him any more.
Did we need Mace Windu in the first place? He was pretty useless.
You math is confusing me, Taco, and I’m pretty sure it’s your fault, not mine.
1/5 = .2
1/4 – .25
“Smidge over 1/5” =.21 or .22
I knew there was a mistake there as soon as I read it, but it hurt my brain to figure it out.
I used to live in Japan on an island that had suzume-bachi (“bee the size of a sparrow”) which I believe is the native name for the Giant Asian Hornet – bright orange, highly toxic sting, can only be defeated by brave little Japanese bees sacrificing themselves for the good of the hive.
They also had kuma-bachi. What are kuma-bachi, you ask? Well, from “hachi”, for bee, voiced to make a compound “bachi”, plus kuma… as in “bear”. “Bee the size of a bear”.
I was on a soccer field with a bunch of middle school kids and heard a whirring noise, not unlike a helicopter. I turned around and there was a kuma-bachi. I remember nothing about what happened next, but I was on the other side of the soccer field and all the kids were going “hey, the foreign chick runs really fast”.
BRB, the post-traumatic stress disorder is kicking in… aggg….. TOO MANY BEES.
I like my women like I like my coffee. Covered in Bees!
Awesome. I like my men to be hive-free.
So were you the one that took the truck, or is it only coffee and women that you alike covered in bees? And what about Nicholas Cage?
I think Nicholas Cage is better covered in either Hornets or Ticks.
Personally, after seeing him in “Kick Ass”, I think he should be covered by an ever-enlarging, grand piano shaped shadow.
A piano shaped shadow with a fuse-shaped shadow sticking out of one side. Totally ruined the movie for me.
[Matt] Without ruining the movie for those who haven’t seen it, Miss Lola could have portrayed a better father figure than that hack. Take your pick of cardboard stand-ups, all equally more effective. Without a dubbed in voice. Lined up backwards. With a sombrero. I am going to have to put Matt tags on this.[/matt]
Is there an entreaty tag? Having said the above, it is a VERY enjoyable movie, and one of the VERY few lately that I actually watched more than once. The performance of Hit Girl more than makes up for the actor shortfalls in other areas. (See above.) Unless you are squeamish about 10 year olds amassing a very high body count.
[matt] Okay. If you all are going to diss my quirky man, Nicolas Cage, at least spell his first name correctly!!! [/matt]
I concur with all above Kick Ass related opinions.
Ooops, sorry Mudsy. I’m not big on the caring about/following actors, so I plead ignorance 🙂
Apparently my [matt indignation] worked properly. I also have no idea what movie you guys are talking about either.
Hehe…
And I do not mean to impugn the fair Lola with cardboard comparisons. I sought to juxtapose her being the symbol of all things feminine with the fact that he can’t portray a father figure. At all. Ever. Did I mention that I did not enjoy his performance?
Liked the movie, did not care for him in it. He was totally unsuited for the role. I think the stilted Big Daddy dialogue was meant to be a parody (I’m hoping it was, anyway) but it came off more like a bad Shatner impression. Hit Girl kicked major ass though.
I’ve got to agree with the Kick Ass comments. Nicolas Cage was terrible in it. The girl playing Hit Girl was fantastic.
Um…..If you are a honey factory? That would be awkward, don’t you think? I mean, I guess I’m equipped to be a baby and milk factory, so I guess it’s possible, but really? Really? *shudders*
I was wondering what had happened to Rosco P. Coltrane. I guess he’s posting on CL, now.
You’d think he’d just send Flash out to get them no good Duke boys…errrr…bees, but he’s probably too busy sleeping in the back of the partol car.
I don’t want to know where the honey comes out of a honey factory person.
You probably don’t want to know where the honey comes out of a bee either.
I do know, which is why I don’t want to know about Honey Factory People (which may be on the bill at the 40 Watt).
When I’m trying to freak out my more squeamish friends I refer to foods by their origin or composition rather than their actual names.
Honey: Sweet Insect Regurgitation
Yogurt: Soured Living Bacteria Colony
Hot Dogs: Intestine cased mashed animal organs with 5% mashed whole rat
Eggs: Chicken Ovulation
You should print out a copy of the FDA Food Defects Handbook, it’s full of fun food facts. Like how many mg of mammalian excreta per pound of bay leaves are allowed after processing.
From memory I remember that 2 slugs are allowed per case of canned vegetables and up to 12 rat hairs and 2 pellets of rat feces are allowed per gallon of peanut butter.
And up to five percent(by weight, not volume) of whole allspice can be moldy.
If you read through the Handbook, most of the reasons given for the amounts of insect fragments and mammalian excreta allowed is “aesthetics”.
I’m so glad I didn’t just have peanut butter in my lunch. I may never eat it again.
(And please don’t tell me any others, I’m much happier not knowing.)
If you read through the Handbook, most of the reasons given for the amounts of insect fragments and mammalian excreta allowed is “aesthetics”.
And I take it that is also the reason given for charging more and/or labeling it as “Organic”.
If you read up on the rules for Organic foods, the label “organic” begins to look more and more like “unregulated/unsafe”. Especially in the US where we don’t have the soil society. Pound for pound more food poisoning cases do come from unpasteurized, natural, and organic foods than they do from mass market. That’s not to say this is a bad thing, just that you have to be more careful with foods that aren’t super processed (Doing things like *GASP* washing them or actually measuring cooking temperatures… the horror.) I always assume that any food I buy fresh from the market has been handled by somebody with ebola who doesn’t like bathing.
As for aesthetics governing the rules, it makes sense. Everything in jars, cans, and other such containers are usually so heavily pasteurized you could put whole globs of dog poo in with the food and it would still be safe to eat.
I do a lot of camping and backpacking, so just about anything falling into my food is considered “seasoning.” If all the people who say how wonderful my cooking is knew this, they would probably be less inclined to eat the things I prepare.
Also: I love peanut butter *finishes his PB&J sandwich*.
[corey] Properly speaking, a single chicken egg would be a “Chicken Ovum”, many eggs would be “Chicken Ova”.[/corey]
I actually stole the term from “Red Dwarf” so I can’t accept the blame for it.
Kryten refers to hardboiled eggs as “Boiled Chicken Ovulations, Delicious!”
[airhead sparqie voice] Well, there has to be a factory!
It’s not made in the back of the store like the rest of the food! There’d be Bees! Duh![/corey]
Spark’ & Sparquette would probably never eat honey again if they saw the simple way it is made.
[honey production corey] After pulling the frames, you take a putty knife and scrape the top layer of wax off the honeycomb. The frames then go in a rack which is spun, which centrefuges the raw product to the sides of the big galvanized tub it sits in. The product (there’s a term-of-art, but danged if I can remember it) drips down to a collection point. It’s heated then passed through a filter into jars or bulk containers. Since honey is not hydroscopic, and the ph balance is antibacterial, not much else is needed.
This is often done in an open barn or shed. The closest to “factory conditions” you get to is in the large bulk producers who are pacakaging honey as a sweetener for the larger food business (for those honey-nt cereals, that honey-mustard salad dressing, the sweet-n-sour sauce market and so on).
In case of curiosity, I grew up with dairy farms and the associated apiary production in half my family. Other half has a sweet tooth and an eye for business {g}.
[/corey]
You can also get honey still in the comb, which is delicious. You have to watch for the occasional “inclusion” though.
My kinfolk told me that during the Depression, folks saved the comb to use in lieu of chewing gum.
Capn, a time or two when visiting my grandparents my grandfather was in the midst of the honey extraction process, exactly as you describe. I thought it was fascinating, and will occasionally buy in-comb honey for the memories. After he died, we had enough honey to last for about half a decade, and then we had to do something I never remembered us doing before: buy honey.
Flashback to college, standing, somewhat dumbfounded at the array of jars there between the syrups and the peanut butter.
They all had LABELS for cryin; out loud, and was not a strip of comb in any of them.
Finally broke down and bought the one from Dennison, Texas, at least I’d heard of that place (been there, too).
Later, when I had a car, I discovered that there were plenty of places with a plain glass jar and some comb inside.
And that, my friends, is half the reason that I chose to try my hand at making mead. (The other half is the flavor and the third half is some bizzare “not having to go to the store when I want a little alcohol in my diet” laziness. Don’t ask me how making mead is less lazy than buying something at the store because I don’t know, either.)
Honey is, purely and simply, miraculous.
And it keeps forever.
I keep trying to convince my hubby that honey should NOT, under any circumstances, be refrigerated. I’m not sure he believes me. He had an odd education, especially regarding food.
I love honey. But we never have it, because my sister can’t stand it, and throws a hissy fit whenever some is brought home.
Prankster? Prankster?? If I had a “friend” who pranked me with “possibly millions of bees” there would be major problems from there on out….
You’d have to go ninja friend on them?
Yes, I would definitely need to find some urban ninjas to befriend, and then we could protect the peace by getting rid of that guy. I was thinking I’d just find an urban ninja for hire, but I didn’t know if ninjas would be for hire, with their whole code of honor schtick.
I think I saw that while my sister was watching one of those god-awful MTV shows whose plot I will never be able to discern.
“HAWHAWHAWHAW!!! THAT WAS CLASSIC!!! Dude, you should see your face right now! I mean, once the swelling finally goes down and you can see again, that is…”
I’m gonna need an epee pen before I can read all of this.
I love how the first one not only wants you to take their bees, but give them a masage as well.
Man, I could use a massaage right about now. I think I screwed up my shoulder some time in the last couple days. I wouldn’t even force bees upon anyone!*
*Except for Llama-nun, bees be upon her.
A sword pen? That sounds like a recipe for zomb dividing by zer
I was wondering about that. If then pen is mightier than the sword, than a sword/pen lovechild would be mightiEST!
Tell me EB, will your product really mighty my penis?
I don’t know–you’d probably have to ask TacoMa’am, given that I don’t know anything about how your pen is 😉
Line crossed. 1:31 EST.
*Highfives EB*
*fist bumps the high five*
Dangit, I always do that. Awwkwaaard….
Better than me. I go for the warrior chest bump. Super awkward….
Many adores to Taco. Because of those sketches, I can’t take Sean Connery seriously in anything.
He’s still the sexiest James Bond of all time.
I’m blaming the narcotic painkiller/antibiotic cocktail for any speeling or incoherance on my part today.
I’ll be back after the fog in my head clears.
Hmm, epinephrine is a stimulant, a vasoconstrictor, and bronchiodialtor–not sure what that would do to a taco peg.
Sounds the ticket before using a pen as a rapier, though.
Wonder if an epeepen just has a different hilt than the stock epipen . . .
[Physiology Corey] Since epinephrine is a vasoconstrictor, and, ah, “pegs” are “mightied” by a massive influx of blood into the corpus cavernosa, than I would think that epinephrine would tend to un-mighty things. The stimulant bit implies the same thing–arousal is generally initiated by the parasympathetic (“resting”) nervous system, and climax is initiated by the sympathetic (“active”) nervous system. So, epinephrine would probably tend to cause premature climax, again being an “un-mighty” state. This is still a bit of a simplification, as the two systems interact like crazy when it comes to reproduction, but that’s the long and short (heh heh) of how epinephrine would affect things, and probably more than you ever cared to know 🙂 [/Corey]
Ok, better then to choose the pistil gripped epee-pen for combatting anaphalxsis {g}
The things I learn here…
After it raises it’s chicks and flies south for the winter, you can just knock it down with a rock.
These might be the non-migratory bees, however.
You’re thinking of the African Swallow.
Which are aggressive when disturbed by knees-bent advancing behaviour . . .
Taco: Are you sure you’re not thinking of the European one? I think African ones are too busy hauling coconuts to medieval England.
Oh my goodness, there was a bit where an apostrophe was used correctly… Bee still my heart… (Of course, there was almost no other punctuation in the whole thing…. but, you take what you can get.)
Free bee hive! For those of us who love both honey, and the chance to die by bee stings! Call today at 1-800-233-4483 (1-800-BEE-HIVE)!
Didn’t know there was a feature that would allow you to call that number. Please do not call that number, or you will face the wrath of the Bee King (probably also some very confused guy in Staples wondering why this nut job keeps asking for bees).
Actually, it’s someplace called Beehive Botanicals. So it is 1-800-Beehive. Yes, I gave into temptation and called.
He still can’t get rid of the bee-covered truck.
The phrase:
“Won’t you bee my neighbor.” Suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.
*Loads his bee gun*
What Sparky needs is a BB bee begone gun!
Not the B.B.B.B.!!! You’ll shoot your eye out!
We’ve only just bee gun…
da-dun, chsssh!
I will never look at Mr. Rogers the same way again, Taco.
“Or what? You’ll release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you?
— Homer Simpson
“without eving disturbing the bees,i done killed alot of them myself,aint but probably a quarter of them left),”
Translates: “Don’t bother the bees…I already did that for you.”
Enjoy trying to work around the remaining quarter of bees who watched their friends and family perish at the hands of this genius.
8,000 bees
-6,000 bees killed by this idiot
——————————–
= 2,000 seriously pissed off bees
I like how he assumes that bees don’t reproduce and make more, angrier, bees.
Oh yeah…bees raised on the hatred of their parents, weaned on the milk of violence, and with nothing but revenge pulsing through their bodies!
There could be a whole generation of angry bees in there now!
A new strain: the Appalachian Grudge Bee.
Angry Bee Generation for band name of the day? Hit songs include “Swarm and Sting” and “I Love You Honey (But You Give Me Hives)”.
It’d be like a hive filled with tiny Charles Bronsons.
A hive of grunting, squinting bees with cheesy mustaches.
For some reason I now have an image of the bee version of Tom Selleck on a toilet after a spicy chili cook-off stuck in my head.
I get Charles Bronson confused with Bronson Pinchot every time. So I pictured a hive filled with Balkis.
[more bee corey]
Unless Bad-Neighbor Spark used a wasp & hornet spay or sees hundreds of dead carcasses on the ground, BNS may be in for an unpleasant surprise as Apoidea are very robust and sturdy creatures.
Also, if this was a tree with a hollow, there’s a strong chance that those are carpenter bees.
Which do not make sweet honey (the combs are made up of wood chips, too).
Carpenter bees can be stepped upon, but, unless the exoskeleton actually ruptures, they can “bounce back” as it were. Also, like the bumble bee, they do not have a barbed stinger, and can stab a person until they get tired of doing all that stinging.
[/corey]
Carpenter bee tale.
Was up on a house, stripping and replacing the drip edge at the roof line. I was also checking on the fascia and soffit boards as I went, as the seamless gutter people were to arrive in about an hour or so.
I’d been lucky on that run, the drip edge was coming off clean, and the fascia was solid and sturdy. I’d only shot a few finish nails in to pretty it up a bit. Making good time, really.
Put the lader up and the drip edge practically slid off at my touch. This was odd. Fascia had an odd sound when the ladder went up against it, too. So, I’m fishing a new stick of drip edge into place when I notice the hole.
It’s a round hole. It is a neat hole, clean even. Like some one had put a 5/16″ auger bit i na hand drill and bored it out. Seemed odd. No sign of a washer or the like, just a hole. Odd. Back to work, grab the nailer and poke a couple nails through the drip edge to hold it for when I move the ladder. Hmm, nails did not feel like they “bit” into anything. So, I look for the rafter ends and switch nailers for the longer nails and fire 3 in the rafters I can reach. Compresssor had shut off, the tank back to pressure, and there was a silence.
Except, it’s not slient, there’s a buzzing, almost and electrical sort of sound. Now, I’m worried, the hole was for some electrical something done wrong and abandoned , and I’ve just run a 10d nail through the thing. Get the buzzer out of my tool pouch to check for live current. nothing on the first nail, or the second. Slip a bit on the ladder and catch myself, if with a bit of a smack agains the fascia. Buzzing gets a lot more dramatic for about one heartbeat, then the 2′ wide, 6′ long soffit panel fall from under under the overhang with about 7-8″ of carpenter bee habitat with it, all the way to the ground!
Out of reflex, I got to feet and hands on the outside of the ladder rails and “Navy” my way to the ground too.
So, there we all are. I’m sitting in the grass, at the foot of the ladder, still holding the Senvo nailer wit hthe 10d nails in it; the bees and I are sharing that moment of tachypsychia where you go “Whoa!” just before the adrenaline kicks in. Even the bees are bit like, “Hey, wha’ jus’ ‘appen’d?” Then I stared my slow-let’s-not-upset-the-forcibly-evicted-bees-anymore inversted bear crawl across the yard over to the the compressor and truck. Al lthe time thinking about the “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin; to do” letter to write to the homeowners.
Only added an extra week to the project in the end, and an exterminator visit before surveying framing damage. Still, was a bit more excitement than a simple job on a ladder ought have.
Honey bees for sale-Take them for free!!!
I’m assuming the last ad ended ONLY because Sparky forgot to take a breath in-between his run-on brain ramblings and the shouting rants.
He was lucky that his head hit the enter key when he passed out.
He’ll have to change his name to Qwerty Uiop Asdfh since that has now been permanently imprinted on his forehead.
Not “Asdfgh”? I see what happened – he was working on the same keyboard as the stud lesbian dishstripper.
I assumed he has big thick eyebrows that is one keywidth(t,g,& b)and creates a valley when his face hits the keyboard from passing out.
No TM…WE were the lucky ones.
*tongue-in-cheek grin*
I can relate to this guy though, i’ve got some bees for sale too; thier good bees and they produce loads of honey, but I can’t keep them anymore, see my wife is afraid of bees and now that we’ve got a small one i have to get rid of all my hives which i got for a reasonable price back in the late 90s from a guy who was closing down his hives, he had them active for 30 years before giving them to me, he said he’d pull nearly 2 gallons of honey a week from each hive, which is more than i’ve ever gotten, but you know those bee folk like to exagerate about their honey production, he also had a lot of fox tail in his area so the honey had a nice earthy flavor that i was never able to get but that’s because we have lots of clover and dandilion here, makes it a pain to keep my lawn cause i have to spray it all the time and if you don’t mix the chemicals just right you’ll kill everything and not just the weeds and when you’ve got a lawn that’s entirely brown the neighbors comaplian about the property value dropping, which is bull because their property isn’t worth nearly as much as they want to think it is and they’re never going to sell those houses anyway because they’re all retired, if they’re property value goes down they should thank me, really, they’ll pay less taxes and have more money to update their houses and buy new appliances, which reminds me that I need to go out and by a new range for our kitchen because out existing one doesn’t work very well, we’re looking at getting a *GASP* *THUMP*
(I actually had to go back and edit that a few times to make the grammar and spelling a bit worse)
Then I would have to say, Mission Accomplished Taco.
I’m most proud of my homonym misuse.
I liked “comaplian”. Sounds like an exotic mixed drink that would place you in a coma.
There are a few more subtle ones in there too:
exagerate
earthy (not capitalized)
retried…
*rereads* damn, I must have un-unfixed that one.
I thought I’d also included “broked” but I can’t find it.
I don’t think earthy has to be capitalized in that instance, unless the original hive owners produced honey that tasted like the planet on which we all live.
I could be wrong, it’s been known to happen.
Typical Taco–typing it right even when he meant to do it wrong :-p
Well… crap.
iSaac would be proud.
I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my newest venture, beemine.org, a select web site to match those with excess bees and those facing severe bee and sweet insect regurgitation.
Never mind, someone already is doing that.
Bee therapy is becoming increasingly popular.
Though, if I were to willingly allow myself to be stung, it had better cure everything…including my ingrown toenail!
The definition of masochist is not: have a death wish.
Well, not in my world, anyway.
Roommate Wanted – Bee Allergies Preferred
Looking for a roommate that can get along with my HOA and who doesn’t have an affinity for honey nor a desire to fulfill any lifelong dream that would cause said HOA to revise “The Rules” yet again.
I am usually easy to get along with but apparently am oversensitive *cough* about 6 lbs. of live bees being housed in my apartment. Contact Walcott at 1-800-555-BUZZ.
[corey] To be fair, with the recent colony collapses, there were beekeepers a little desperate for new colonies for a while. From the looks of these postings, though, there’s been sufficient recovery that this is no longer the case.
Or these are some other variety of yellow flying insect. Around here, it tends to be yellow jackets. They make truly fascinating umbrella-shaped hives with open cells and they LOVE to share your barbequed meats. My dad got some truly great pictures of them removing small corners off the steak he’d grilled and attempting to fly away with their prizes… Some of them were overly optimistic about their carrying capacity. They stay away from moving meat so don’t sit too still when they’re about.[/corey]
[corey]Yes, as I mentioned earlier most people lump Hornets (inclusive of our friend the yellow jacket) in with Bees. Since most of these people mention “nests” I tend to think that they’ve actually got hornets in paper hives rather than true bee infestations, especially the one in the dumpster which is TOTALLY a place hornets love to nest. And given that the biggest bald face hornet nest I ever saw was roughly 4′ in diameter, I would wager that it could be expensive to destroy a nest of that size if you’re calling in a professional (which is overkill for a hornet nest if you know your stuff… which these people don’t).
The one talking about the infestation INSIDE the tree could go either way, but it is most likely honey bees as building inside narrow structures is their thing. And if it’s from the southern reaches of the US, they’ve probably got Africanized. And keeping Africanized Honey Bees as pollinators and honey makers is like hunting deer with a howitzer.
[/corey]
As somebody who used to spend a lot of time trying to convince native pollinators to move into our yard, I learned WAY too much about bees and hornets.
Oh don’t be silly.
We all know that the difference is that hornets and wasps construct square nests. Bees construct Honeycomb cereal.
I hear that’s big.
I thought wasps construct gated subdivisions.
And make Cheerios.
I’ve heard tell of some truly spectacular amateur hornet/wasp eradications, frequently involving flammable liquids and supersoakers. Why would you deprive the neighborhood kids of the chance to do a good deed for the local church?
Our best (before we knew what we were doing) involved primarily M80s and a bug bomb.
Yeah, you can imagine how that ended.
Also, the explosive power of 4 M80s is enough to ignite a bug bomb in the right conditions (which I won’t mention here).
Now we’re much more boring. Smoke, dusk, gas bombs, and liquid poison *Yawn*.
Mmmm, M80s are delicious. I still like Khaos better, but M80 is a good alternate if I get bored. Much better than the original Monster. And I’m sure if I had 4 M80s, I’d be pretty explodable :-p
BBQ can confuse wasps. And bees. Their antennae are designed to detect and track CO2 exhalations from predators/threats. It’s also why they are “attracted” to darker colors.
But, wood smoke, like from hard wood has a sophorific effect. the trick is in how to light the fire to get hardwood smoking if the charcoal is in the cabinet the wasps built a nest . . .
Here in Texas, the “field guide” as taught is: Fuzzy = Bee; Yellow = Wasp; everything else is a hornet. Mostly.
It’s gone very dry in the last 6,7 weeks, drier than nromal, so I’ve been looking for paper wasp nests. The reason is that this is the time and climate of year that red-faced wasps will crop up. Meaner creatures are hard to imagine. They will take over entire yellow-jacket nests; feeding on the YJs and the larval wasps as food for the young. They are aggressive, ill-tempered, and territorial.
But, sadly, too many mistake the humble mud dauber for a red-faced wasp. The mud dauber is a middling-benign hornet that makes dirt & saliva mud tunnels to house their young. They fly aggressively but rarely sting. They still can trigger that paleolithic “eek!” responce, though.
I have a special place in my heart for the Mud Wasp (What Capn calls the Mud Dauber). Like many things, I’m sure the name of this little guy is regional (though mud wasp is an accepted name according to the always correct Wikipedia).
An industrious little guy that both looks awesome and is rather timid and non-confrontational (except for the flying at your face thing), I like watching them scrape up the mud to build their little adobe egg nests.
Sadly I think I’ve only ever seen one mud wasp in the midwest here, and never one of the egg cases.
You’re welcome to come get as many dirt-daubers as you like. We scrape them off the porch regularly.
Well, I will be
stalking youon a buisness trip in NC rather soon.I have so many hornets/wasps/bees/flying things in my yard right now that I doubt one of Lola’s Asian Jumbo Shrimp hornets would faze me right now. Thankefully, I’m not allergic to anything and they leave the dogs alone.
[Storytime!] Oh yellow jackets… When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a basketball hoop (the kind that’s actually in a block of cement in the ground). It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately the next summer a colony of yellow jackets moved into the base of the hoop, and got really pissed every time the thing vibrated. We didn’t play basketball much after that…. Another time, my brother was playing outside while my dad was mowing the lawn, and my dad mowed over a nest, and the angry things took it out on my brother. They chased him into the house, where my parents locking him in the bathroom with towels under the door and he hid underwater in the tub for a while. As a cruel older sister, I don’t remember if I thought it was funny or if I was concerned about him…. [/Storytime] Though, it might have been hornets or something–Taco might know which kind of insect builds nests in degrading cement and underground.
Depends on where you live. But living underground suggests a type of hornet, as that’s what they do. Technically anything that builds a paper nest (Even bald faced hornets) is a wasp. Yellow jackets are wasps too, but are closer to hornets in the way they act.
It could also have been Africanized honey bees if they got their hands on an old mole network and combed it (Not very typical, but it happens). The fact that they chased your brother inside and you had to take such extreme measures suggests this, as /most/ hornets don’t chase for more than 50′ and usually don’t bother trying to follow you inside. (Some will chase you to the ends of the Earth though).
Living in corroded concrete suggests a type of bee, but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of hornets to live there. Bees typically like corroded concrete though because it gives them lots of little nooks and crannies to stash eggs and larvae. It will usually be mason or bumble bees. However, if they’re building UNDER the concrete and just using the holes as access, you’re looking at any number of hornet species.
(I should note that the definition between wasp and hornet is extremely blurry, especially since hornets are just a subset of wasp. You’ll get different answers from different people on what the distinction is. The rule of thumb we always used was that wasps build above ground and hornets build below. May not always be true, but it’s true enough.)
It was way-north upstate NY. Africanized are only really in southern US, right? (please please please…)
Typically yes, AHBs can’t survive the cold winter weather, so I highly doubt you had those.
You most likely had some kind of aggressive European ground hornet. Most won’t really chase you like they did your brother, but there are a few varieties out there that don’t forgive easy.
[more storytime]Oddly, I also have a yellow jacket/brother/mowing story. My brother was mowing the lawn and he ran over a yellow jacket abode (although Taco can tell me if they were perhaps not yellow jackets, they were living in a hole in the ground). They were not happy and swarmed up and stung him repeatedly as he ran for the house. They did not attempt to follow him inside and he has never lived anywhere with a lawn since.[/storytime]
Sounds like your garden variety european ground hornet. Nasty buggers, but they don’t really chase you very far. They look really similar to yellow jackets, to the point where only an entomologist could really point out the differences.
Yellow jackets make hanging nests (they look pretty much as described by Moira).
I have a hornet story!
When I was little, my whole family went to my maternal grandparents’ farm for the occasion of their fiftieth weeding aniversary. I got the dubious honor of sleeping in what was known as “the hornet bedroom”. There was a hornets’ nest in the tree outside and hornets would constantly work their way into the room, find themselves trapped and die, leaving little hornet corpses all over the floor that had to be cleaned up frequently. I was warned repeatedly to always check the bed before I got in and to check the floor before walking over it. The morning of the big party I got out of bed and promptly stepped on a dying hornet. Much screaming ensued. It was decided by the adults that instead of using sterile bandages and first aid ointment, an old home remedy would be used. A lump of my dad’s freshly chewed chewing tobacco was applied to the stings and bandaged in place with a strip of rag. I still got to go to the party, but the tobacco juice stained the foot of my stocking brown.
And that should be “wedding”,not “weeding”.
My parents always sprinkled meat tenderizer on stings. It worked really well, actually.
Also: “Wohoo, we’ve now weeded this place once a year for 50 years! It’s partay time!”
Meat tenderizer I can understand, but a lump of cancer-weed soaked in my father’s saliva? I’m still not sure why that was considered a good idea.
A “good idea” is a regional concept. Your parents were raised in the South, right?
*Flees from SJ’s wrath*
No wrath, I come from a long line of proud rednecks. About 90% of my extended family lives within fifty miles of me and I don’t think more than a dozen of my relatives have ever lived or worked outside of NC.
That sounds disturbingly like my wife’s family here.
They couldn’t imagine what it was like for me to have moved 2000 miles away from home. But, for some reason my parents’ families has a fair history with dispersal (We must not like each other very much).
On my Dad’s side: My grandparents started in Montreal with their parents (who moved here from Scotland) and moved to California after getting married. My father moved to Western Washington, while my uncles ended up in Oregon and Northern Washington. I ended up in Wisconsin and my Sister ended up in Idaho. My cousins are in North Dakota, Tennessee, Oregon, and Washington.
My mom’s side of the family isn’t much different. I think if I count all my family just from my grandparents down we have roughly 17 states accounted for. If I go out another branch I think we hit around 34.
It’s weird for me with my wife’s family because 4 generations all live within 40 miles of each other.
For Hungarians, it’s Windex that you put on every wound.
A poultice of soggy tobacco doesn’t seem that odd, historically.
I have a cousin who lives in Texas (Ft. Worth, I think) with her husband and kids, and two uncles who live in California (Pacifica) with their families(four cousins, three with spouses, who have five children among them). That’s about as far as we’ve disbursed, not counting military service or work travel.
Sarajean, I’ve heard of the tobacco-poultice-for-bee-stings before (specifically, a dismantled cigarette and saliva), but don’t know what the medicinal effect is supposed to be derived from. Corey, anyone?
Wasp story.
Yellow jackets like sweet liquids.
So, if you work in construction in Texas, you learn middling quick to either finish or conceal canned drinks. If you leave an empty coke can out unattended for a few minutes, you will return to find sevreal wasps excitedly checking on every last droplet in the can.
A body can tell folks new to a job site by their reaction to that buzzing can. I remember a day when a far-too-assertive engineer was out on site, busy (as a bee {G}) pointing out all our inefficiencies. The annoyance of this was some tempered when the stuffed shirt picked up his not-finished DP to discover it was buzzing. Said worthy emitted an under-masculine sort of sound, and flung the buzzing can into the air before attempting to flee. Which was more difficult since our guy was wearing tassled office-type shoes (poor traction on dusty concrete). Even more difficult as, once the retreat developed traction, the lobbed can, returning balistically, intersected the line of retreat spewing more diet DP and confused wasps about.
made for a very confused write-up of the day. One for the incident report for the welder who almost fell off the building for laughing so much; the other for all the workplace violations the pompus donkey had committed(and separate ones for the ones committed on exit).
We always knew it was summer when the first yellow jacket was taken orally.
A friend of mine, who was none too bright, was almost invariably the one to ring in the Summer. He never learned to check his cans, and he was a big fan of “slamming the can.”
Only guy I’ve ever known to have wasp stings in his esophagus and stomach. Dude was lucky he wasn’t allergic.
This has reminded me that I need to build some Bee condos for my yard next year. So many projects I need to do.
I must say that this post beedazzled me.
You’re going to take the beedazzling away from the poor little plain deer hooves? How cruel…. :-p
Hey, Terminix ad.
Google adsense comes up with something relevant for once!
Nice! Same here!
I guess we are weak today… Quick, someone start talking about something random! I don’t know…. quote Chaucer or something :-p
My Craftmatic bed gives the most comfortable night’s sleep ever!
Energizer keeps me going… and going… and going….
What?
The Clarinets are out of time and it ruined us.
There is a part in the opener when we are facing backfield and we must watch the clarinets’ feet to keep time.
We made our entrance very, very late.
And then the trumpets were ALL miraculously several yardlines off. The Low Brass managed to keep cool and keep going, hitting all the right dots on our correct sets, and that was awesome of us.
Let’s see what Google does with that + bees.
I saw that, too. It must be checking my NYC ISP location, as it’s prominently featuring cockroaches. Thanks for stereotyping, Google AdSense.*
*Even if it’s accurate, it’s still a stereotype.
No, I’ve got cockroaches in my ad, too (just two, faded in the background, but they are still larger than life [I dearly hope] and icky-looking). I think if I ever saw one in real life, I would have a fit…
(Contrary to what today’s comments suggest, I’m not really bug-a-phobic. But large/unnatural/squicky bugs make me want to be in another room while MrEB takes care of the problem. Unfortunately for me, he doesn’t share my feelings about spiders not belonging in the house. He doesn’t even share my feelings about spiders DEFINITELY not belonging in my kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom. I had a spider fall on my head once when I was showering, and that is NOT an experience I want to repeat.)
In college I dated a guy who had a house with a couple other guys, none of whom cared about non-venomous spiders or their webs. Said house had lots of the little local spiders (teeny beige bodies and long legs) with a fair-sized spider condo on the bathroom ceiling and two kitchen cupboards entirely given over to webs.
I dated another guy who had a “treaty” with spiders… big ones were not allowed in the house, medium ones had to stay on the ceiling or upper half of the walls, teeny ones were allowed to hunt anywhere they pleased.
I kinda got blasé about spiders as long as they left me alone. I do wish my cat were a little more energetic about hunting them, though.
Have I got some bad news for you.
More bad news.
Since you’re already having giant hornet nightmares, I won’t add to them by commenting on the size of the roaches and whether or not they’re larger than life … I guess it depends on where you live.
The funniest roaches I’ve ever seen/heard of (a small category, with one entry) are some from Africa which apparently whistle. I’ve only seen them (someone at college had some for study in a container) and not heard them, but later received confirmation that they are definitely a) huge and b) capable of whistling.
I loathe big bugs with a passion, but living on one’s own means that nobody else is there to kill the bugs, so it’s my job. I tend to exterminate (hi, Laurel!) and then freak out later.
I kept a pair of African Whistling Roaches as pets as a kid. They mostly just hissed, but if you got them excited enough they’d go to Dixie.
I had a fit when I found something that looked just like a hobo spider within a couple feet of my son’s crib. Thankfully, as soon as we moved out of the basement apartment, we haven’t had gigantic spider problems… just teeny little ones that I’m hoping the kitten will decide are tasty.
Hobo Spider? Seriously? It looks nothing like a hobo. Give it some white face paint, a tattered hat, and a kerchief pack hanging from a stick, and THEN tell me it’s a hobo spider!
Depressy, the hobo spider?
I was raking leaves in the back
semi-landscaped patch of dirtyard in my last place, which was a brownstone and did not have a large yard, and pulled over a batch that exposed some kind of brownish spider with a clearly visible mandible of unusual size.I made a point to quickly finish after that. *shudder*
Later, I looked it up online. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was but none of the options were comforting. :/
Correction: the giant African whistling cockroaches are in fact Madagascar hissing cockroaches. (1993 isn’t as clear in memory as it once was.)
**winks at EB**
Oh, so that’s where I left my pet spidey! By EB’s child’s crib!
**Oogles Lola’s shoulder-knees, giggles girlishly.**
“Bee keepers want $500 to $2000 for removal. Looking for someone to take them for free.”
Hey! I want someone to do $500-$2000 worth of work for free as well! I need my septic tank cleaned, that’s about as much fun as bees, right? And you can keep all the
sludgehuman excrementorganic fertilizer you want!Hey, you can actually make crude oil out of organic sludge. Someone did it with pig excrement and I think speculated that human would be an even better source because of our varied diets. Dunno if that would be affected by all the preservatives we eat, though.
Means we’d get better gas milage.
The idea of twice use from the food I eat…it’s making my head spin.
Wait, so I’d eat, and get that energy…and then I’d….and we’d use that to….whaaaaaaaaaa????
http://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/etrade-shocked-face.png
The MythBusters fueled a diesel car with used frying grease.
[corey] Diesel engines were originally designed to run on veggie oil. After the inventor died, his friends went and slightly altered it to run on petrol products so they could snuggle up to the oil industry.
As long as you filter your oil really *really* well, a deisel engine will, indeed, run on it and smell heavenly. However, if you do not live in a consistently warm climate, you will need to add a fuel warmer to keep your veggie oil flowing properly.[/corey]
Corey Check: When they are at home in the hive, I thought they generally were NOT called a swarm. A swarm is when the queen bee takes off to make a new hive followed by oodles of her workers and drones.
Or when you disturb the nest enough for them to come after you.
He thinks that you can bribe bees with tiny wardrobes of office appropriate attire? Where are you going to find someone to sew thousands of tiny double breasted jackets? And the shoes!!!
I’d do it, but I’m busy sewing twenty pairs of children’s underwear.
They’re not trying to get someone to get rid of their bees! Obviously this is a humanitarian mission, as the bees have things they need, and the church wants to organize people to gather the things that the bees need! (Maybe they live in a place where there’s not too many flowers/plants, and they need people to bring potted pollen producers?) How sweet of them…
Churches should have the easiest time getting rid of pests… all they have to do is make them members and nominate them for a teaching position. Guaranteed, the pests won’t be back.
(edit: there’s that deja vue again)
They should put those bees on the buildings and grounds committee. Never seem em again.
Oh, the B&GC gets heard from, just not by congregation members.
Built a chapel for a church the one time. Building Committee had 15 members and three official Chairs (really, they all thought they were chairs, and the rest were apostate heathens that ought not be allowed among Good people). Stayed with that project, mostly since their checks never bounced.
But, they got what they wanted, and it showed.
Please open your hymnals to page 343
“We gather together
This nest full of hornets”
Next hymn: “A Mighty Fortress is Our Hive”
3rd Hymn: Onward Buzzing Soldiers
“The Buzzing Hymn of the Republic”: Glory, glory, honeylujah.
“When the Wasps Go Buzzing In”
“I’ll Fly Away”
My favorite is: “When Bees like a River”
edit: *snicker* honeylujah
“Abide With Bees”
“Stand by Bee.”
I like “The Old Rugged Wasp”
Then could we do “Through the Swarm” and “You’ll Never Bee Alone”?
That wasn’t me who suggested “Plastic Bees-us”, honest it wasn’t.
There is the children’s classic: “If you’re happy and you know it, buzz your wings”.
LL, “This Little Hive of Mine” is also popular, but it’s no “Beesus Loves the Little Hornets.”
I don’t recognize most of these songs. Are the performed by Sting?
Not Sting, Taco, but I’m pretty sure my parents have some Hornet Tabernacle Choir records with these hymns.
I was always partial to “All God’s Hornets Got a Place in the Hive”
**assumes best fakey southern pastor impression**
May the Llama-Nun bless all o’ y’all, an’ may th’ Spice Christ bring about bees on earth! Now, by the name (organ starts up in the background, pastor is suddenly of African descent) of the Holy Spirit, to Bojangles for their most delicious sweet tea and fried chicken!
**cell phone rings, Astro picks it up and answers.**
Yes, Rev. Sharpton, this is Astrognash.
Beesus died to save your honey!
“Bee not Dismayed” or perhaps “Hive of Ages, Buzz for Me”?
11:16 am MDT, 120 comments, and no line crossing?? Usually the line is already crossed when I get to work!
You should never cross the line with bees. They’re not known for being forgiving.
Hard to cross the line when we’re given bees to work with.
Honey… you’ve ignored the honey. oops… dangit.
You’ve crossed the line given less, I’m sure. :-p Also, we’re missing Hamcan this morning, that probably also contributes…
Aww, you missed me.
Bee healthy – eat your honey!
*This message is brought to you by your friendly local Queen*
Grampdaddy, I know a few old queens, and you, honey – *snap snap* – are waaaay too butch to be a queen! 8)
But, here, you may still partake of the flask anyway.
Beehemian Rhapsody?
Re: Ad#1.
Two Words: Trash Honey.
Make of that what you will.
Awww blech. And it was at a church. It’s gonna taste like graham crackers and watered down apple juice!!!
That’s probably why they didn’t ask for any of the honey after removal.
Now playing at 40 Wasp – Dumpster Honey! Playing favorites off their smash gospel album,What a Friend We Have That Bees-us.
With special guest Honeylujah.
(psuedo Matt) Free the bees! Free the bees NOW!
Bees must be free! We have no right to simply enslave them and claim the output of their hard work as our own. Honey stolen, thousands of bee citizens killed in genocidal purges….justice for the bees!
Free the Bees NOW! (Matt)
Jerry Seinfeld – is that you?
I did not like The Bee Movie. I didn’t dislike enough to actually hate it, but my children did.
[corey] Vegans don’t eat honey for this very reason. [/corey]
I don’t eat honey because it has something like five times the amount of sugar that raw cane sugar does. I kind of miss it 🙁
Caffeinated marshmallows.
Now we really can slice our coffee!
http://www.uncrate.com/men/culture/food/stay-puft-caffeinated-marshmallows/
Sweet!
(Literally.)
I. Need. Those.
Desperately!
Dunno, might be easier to just put NoDoz or expresso powder in home-made marshmellow (which is way better, anyway)
Well, I durn done gots me a inquistation of Ant Beas in mah yard and I planted grass but them Aunt Bees done durn ate it all. Them bees been making holes in the durn done durt and grass caint grow and them expurts at NC State done durn told me to keep em cause theym be good for the durn done vironment. So I’ll pack them up in mah done durn minty Integra truck and you can done durn take them for free.
Durn it!
Bee fore I appear to forget, Cap’nMac! Up on the box! Punchity Punch Punch!
G’Night, Planet of the Apiaries!
Ow, ow, thanks, and bees be upon you too.
I just read/skimmed all the comments to see what I missed. After reading it many many times, the word “bees” is inordinately funny. Kinda like “pants” in that way.
Actually, bees are a valuable commodity. My parents are beekeepers and belong to a beekeepers association, and while I could understand a professional beekeeper charging a fee for removal, some at least are willing to take them just for fun and profit.
Some people are just lucky when it comes to bees and stings. I don’t mind being near the hives without a suit…only been stung once, when I accidentally mashed one with my hand. 🙁
Huh. I guess people who say “I done (verb)ed” haven’t figured out yet that the rest of the English-speaking world mocks them for it.
One half of Honey
——————————————————————————–
I’ll share honey from my bee hive if you have place to keep the hive.
I know where is good place to “park” the hive .
Call for details ###-###-####
Do we all agree that this one is not about bees, hives, or honey? Perhaps it’s the fact that single and well…it’s been a while…making me sensitive to these types of things…
Can someone just agree with me? Not.about.bees.
ugh…that *I* am single…
serious, I need my own tv show.