Jul 17 2009
Bee update… (Any beekeepers aboot?!)
Flying Cat, that clever feline indeed, was spot on: I said to Erlend last night, “Well… I did want to try my hand at keeping bees. But not inside of the hoose!!”
So, anyhoo, it seems that K~~~ and H~~~ up the road not only rescue me when my tarts blow up in the oven but they also specialize in rescuing panicking pregnant ladies from an infestation of bees. While K~~~ called around to try and find a bee getter-outter, H~~~ hustled down to the farm (in an antique car no less!) and closed himself in the bee-ridden livingroom armed with a can of wasp spray. I heard a lot of moving aboot, shots of spray, silence, more moving aboot… and H~~~ soon emerged with the bottom of a pasta sauce jar full of wriggling bees. They looked like honey bees to me. I don’t think that our lum dwellers are wasps.
H~~~ then whipped out a folding ruler and proceeded to engineer a Fireplace Blocking Device created out of cardboard and duct tape. With this in place we soon had peace and quiet in the livingroom.
Until this evening, at exactly the same time as yesterday evening! All of a sudden… the livingroom began to fill up with baffled bees!! Only they were anything but agressive and always stuck to the window in a desparate bid to escape. So Erlend got rid of the bees and then we perched in the livingroom and watched the cardboarded fireplace like a pair of hawks. A bee appeared, then two more… but we had no idea how they got out! An hour or so later we saw two bees wriggle their way out of a weensy crack in the mantelplace!!!!!!
I give these bees much credit for creativity… “C’mon, mates! Just follow the light!!”
Erlend set upon this (and every other crack he could find) with paper towels and stuffed everything good. Then we sat there and listened as a massive swarm of honey bees built up behind the cardboard. TALK ABOUT CREEPY!! I was just in there working on my book (by now the wean had been bathed and put to bed) and all I could hear was bee upon bee buzzing away just behind the cardboard, looking for a way to escape…
I fled. It’s all just a bit too Alfred Hitchcock for me!!!
With that said… are there any beekeepers aboot that might be able to help us remove the bees from the lum without having to kill them? Because their days are numbered otherwise…
(Seriously, I could write my own “Katie Morag” version of life on Orkney!!)
4 responses so far
According to the Scottish Beekeepers website your nearest beekeeper appears to be Mr. W. D. Bruce at Thurso tel 01847-892760. Perhaps he will know someone in your area who can help you
Erlend Omand who caretakes the Stromness Kirk is an expert on bees. Can’t find him in the Orkney Phone Book, but his parents live at Skansen in Stromness. I’m fairly sure he’d help…I think his brother has the garage out at Garson. (Which would be another way of getting in touch).
I like being a clever feline indeed *purrs*
Just ran downstairs to see if Erlend Omand’s number is on the jar of his delicious honey (which seems, by the way, to have cured Stella’s hay fever) - but no. And it just gives his address as Graham Place, Stromness.
have you still the bee problem?