Bee drama

My house smells like a hive.  I have all the removed frames, capped honey, and partial frames in here, because it must all be perfectly dry before storing.  I’ve also got all the unshucked beans and hanging dried herbs in here, so it’s crowded.  But it smells good.

Not surprisingly, there’s the odd bee in here, browsing.  I have to keep the doors shut.

I heard one, screaming, and it was intense enough I had to investigate.  “Screaming” might sound hyperbolic, but it is, it’s a high pitch buzz of panic and desperation.  I know it well;  it’s the sound they make when they get tangled in my hair, just before they sting me on the head.

This time, this honeybee was stuck in a spider’s web, and the spider, almost the size of the bee’s head, was approaching! Dunh dunh dunhhh.  Hence the screaming.  Spiders are allowed to stay around here.  I never kill them intentionally, I just vacuum up their webs when they get messy, make them start over.  In gratitude, they reproduce.  They don’t get to eat my bees though.

I intervened to save the bee.  Then we spent the next three to five minutes together trying to clean the web off of her.  She had two legs, one wing, and an antenna tied up good, and I was working two tiny twigs like a puppeteer, trying to wind up the web strands and give her something to pull against.  She was quiet (no more screaming, time to work the problem), and doing gymnastics on my fingertips tugging and wiping and pushing.  She was most upset with the webbing on her head/antennae.  But we got her cleaned off, and she left.  I need some honey after that.

Pictured is another bee, later, who got a tiny bit snagged by a web in the window.  That spider (smaller) investigated, then turned tail and ran.  Cut the tethers!  Abort!