Honey bees

There is a honey bee hive in the base of the neighbor's wall, and they are active but normal honey bees, fortunately.

However, that's the wall that our little black dog likes to jump up on to "discuss the state of the world" with dogs on the other side. A couple of weeks ago, he got stung, we now believe, because he ran to us screaming, as only a dog warning his pack will do, and kept screaming in pain for what seemed like half an hour but was really only 2 minutes,tops. We thought he had torn a dew claw, or maybe had injured a bone or torn something else, when he fell onto his back in the corner after one particularly heroic leap. He was so loud that neighbors came out to investigate. A bee keeper later told us that bees hate anything black, and Wolfie is black, and he was there on their patch!

After a week, DH noticed that bees were hovering around that corner of the wall near the base. Having recently read about an attack of Africanized bees in our city, he called a bee keeper. The keeper came out, determined that the bees were pretty mellow little dears, and DH and he discussed options.

The trouble with saving the hive was that the wall isn't ours, and one can't just have someone tear into someone else's stucco wall to extract the bees. This wall is also leaning drunkenly across the whole back area and could come down, which then would really be a problem. We don't need any liability problems along with this bee problem; though, technically, the bees aren't our problem.

What was done was that the bee keeper sealed the bees both in and out, as it was mid-day. Bees, being as determined as they are in life, have found another way in! So, the bee keeper is coming back this morning to try again!

I am not able to work in the weedy garden, the poor, bored little doggie can not go out and accost his rivals, so here we sit, inside, and console each other until this threat to our safety is over.

Meanwhile, my inner peace and harmony with the world of creatures is in a state of sucky remorse. I don't want to have them killed but not a lot can be done. They are good bees, been helpful to the world and to my garden, and I've always worked around them happily. They just cannot set up a new hive in that wall, period. To me this is a little tragedy because I love honey bees. They do so much work for us, make flowers and fruiting plants produce and stay healthy, and give us delicious honey.