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I remember going to disnyland wand a bee flew after me into a store. Got Laughed at it by my family.
But no, Bees are proof their is no god.

Water and motrin....water and motrin.....wait...ibuprofen outside the military

Shot a wasp nest that was underneath the balcony with a paintballl gun once..... I than very quickly proceeded to get in my truck and get the feth outa there before either A)the mud wasps killed me or B)My dad killed me.... after the wasps were done with him. Lets just say I was lucky it turned out he was at the pub I worked at at the time.

 Jihadin wrote:
RC West eh lol. Saw a few of those "chinooks" come out a B-Hut in Ghazni.

Never been to RC west. We had them in RC East in Jalalabad, and in RC South near Qalat.

The military has created a hatred for anything that walks on more than 4 legs. I low crawled though fire ant hills when I was a young private. That didn't feel good.

We stopped having a problem with bees when I got this chap over to have a look at them.

A swarm of bees once chose my aunt and uncle's house to make a hive in; it must have been terrifying to see them covering the window panes. Luckily they chose the bricked up chimney to set up home in, and it was a simple case of removing one brick, inserting the smoke or whatever, and replacing the brick. They filled several vacuum bags with the dead bees!

A few years back I was at the Download Festival in Donington, heading over to the second stage to watch Static-X. There was a security fence right down the middle of the mosh-pit (it's where they run the cabling from the mixer tower down to the stage), looked at the right side and thought 'awesome, right side is completely deserted, looks like I can get to the front of the stage'. Then I realised why it was deserted, a massive swarm of honey bees had decided to settle on the security fence on the right side of the stage. So off to the very crowded left side it was...

Taking to a random guy, his words were 'damn, someone just lost a lot of money' (he was apparently an apiarist, and knew how much a swarm that big would cost).

Also, when I was around 10, I got stung on the left buttock by a wasp.

My dad used to try and suck the poison out of stings - I don't know what was worse, the sting or his beard.

But we had this conversation in our house

Brother:I've been stung!
Dad: Where is it? I'll suck the poison out
Brother:I sat on it!
Dad: ermm, never mind, I'm sure it'll get better soon...

Saw a wood wasp out the back of our house once
http://www.kendalluk.com/general3.htm

At the time, I didn't know it was harmless.
Just looked like it had come equipped for people!

Here in California the bees we have here are hardly aggressive at all, and there are some wasps in old corners of places and out in the country, but not where I live.

But the Black Widows and Ants.....

When I was around 7, I was playing in the sandbox at my school and I came home with around 10 bites from ants half an inch long. I think bugs just love eating me though, I've probably experienced over 1000 mosquito bites in my lifetime and, I was bitten by a black widow spider when I was 5 in kindergarten. Thankfully, I've never been stung by anything.

Worrying this year we've not seen a single bee at the garden yet. Not a bloody one visiting the flowers. It's worrying.

We have also been talking about keeping bees ourselves, to try and do our bit to battle colony collapse.





Also, Kilkrazy, your wife must have been utterly unphased, considering she's from the land of these spawn of nightmares...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Worrying this year we've not seen a single bee at the garden yet. Not a bloody one visiting the flowers. It's worrying.

We have also been talking about keeping bees ourselves, to try and do our bit to battle colony collapse.

From what I've heard, the federal government is getting pretty strict on small apiaries, and are worried about the negative effects of Monsanto effects on bees, as well as the spread of things like foulbrood (which is a spore that kills bee larvae that are younger than 3 days old).

While I fething hate bees, and I'm fairly certain this thread has planted the seed of a future case of Apiphobia, I love me some honey.

Source about feds taking bees: http://www.naturalnews.com/035920_beekeeper_Illinois_raid.html

You know.....I just spent like 40 bucks on honey....

 Alfndrate wrote:
Source about feds taking bees: http://www.naturalnews.com/035920_beekeeper_Illinois_raid.html

1.) Fascinating read

2.) when I read this

which Ingram believes may have ultimately been rooted in a deliberate conspiracy by the state to hide the truth about Roundup, and subsequently steal his most vibrant bees

I sort of snickered.

I'm no fan of Monsanto but this seems a little unlikely.

What's with all the hatred of bees? I think the little gals are cool.
People seem so scared of bees out of all proportion of the actual danger/discomfort, except those people who live near south american bees or african bees, those bees are mad.

Swarms look impressive but aren't really a stinging danger. Most of the time the bees are either too busy looking for a new home to sting you, or too full of honey and thus less able to physically bend their body in order to sting you.
Granted I've been round bees most of my life but walking into that "wall" of flying bees is actually quite safe (depending of course on the aggressiveness of that particular hive).

A few things to remember about bees:
1. If one is buzzing you don't taker a swipe at it with your hand, in effect by doing that you are attacking it and you will get a more aggressive response.

2. If a bee is buzzing you , stand still, if the little gal won't leave , just walk calmly away, normally 10-20 meters does the trick.

3. if you are going near a beehive/swarm preferably don't wear black, bees are said to interpret the wearing of black as someone being a bear, thus getting the wearer a more aggressive response.

4. If you wear blue, particularly deep blues around bees they will come over to check you out, as bees see in the blue spectrum , a vibrant blue normally means (BUT NOT ALWAYS) a higher nectar content in the flower, see #2 for details on how to deal with this.

5. If you get stung and their are a lot of bees about scrape out the sting with a fingernail, then go wash the site of the sting. Washing it reduces the amount of bee venom on you, which in effect calls all the other bees from that hive to attack you, or at least treat you more aggressively.

6. Things that piss bees off : soil in the air, weirdly this seems to engender a very aggressive response with bees (i guess it's kinda like flak fire for bees). Sweeping will cause a bee to check you out and normally whilst doing it you won't hear the bee buzzing you and so get stung. Sweeping and digging are the #1 reasons i get stung, though i've probably got over 200,000 (500,000?) bees in my backyard so YMMV.

Noise can also cause bees to get edgy especially power tools. Changing the enviroment around their hive will normally get a guard bee to come and check you out , not aggressive, but if you don't notice they are buzzing you you can get stung, then again i have gardened right in front of the entrance to a hive (within 1 m) with no problems.

ALSO it's important to remember with bees that you can get individual bees that have a screw loose and are extremely agressive, one day i had one buzz me, i walked away, waited 4 mins , then came back to keep digging (which is normally ok) , he was still there circling the spot he buzzed me. I then went inside did some other stuff and came back to the spot after 15 mins, he was still there circling, that is rare behaviour for one of my hives and a one off.

Queen bees carry 8 sets of DNA to lay eggs with so the behaviour of the hive can vary a bit over the life of a queen depending on which set of sperm/dna she is laying at the time.

About the guy in the article, what a dill weed.
American foulbrood affects about 3% of hives in Australia, and as far as i am aware can not be treated with chemicals (european can but not american) , trouble is once one hive gets it in a locality all the hives tend to get it. It gets transferred when the infected hive gets weak and all the other bee hives around rob them and take it back to their own hives. Considering bees have a normal range of about 2.5 kms and a max range of about 5 kms this disease can spread far quite easily.

It isn't tyranny, it's called keeping an infectious disease under control (think of foulbrood like bird flu to get an idea on why you have to) , Ingram is irresponsible as an owner of livestock. As far as destroying his property , in regard to getting rid off foulbrood you have to either irradiate all the gear infected or burn it. If he wasn't doing it then the authorities have to do it. Most commercial beekeepers are nomadic , so having an apiarist with his non chemical bees infected with foulbrood really isn't an option.\

MeanGreenStompa , if you want any info about beekeeping PM me or ask me in this thread, granted i don't know about american conditions but aside from a pest or two and conditions (like snow) it doesn't wary that much.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Worrying this year we've not seen a single bee at the garden yet. Not a bloody one visiting the flowers. It's worrying.

We have also been talking about keeping bees ourselves, to try and do our bit to battle colony collapse.

From what I've heard, the federal government is getting pretty strict on small apiaries, and are worried about the negative effects of Monsanto effects on bees, as well as the spread of things like foulbrood (which is a spore that kills bee larvae that are younger than 3 days old).

While I fething hate bees, and I'm fairly certain this thread has planted the seed of a future case of Apiphobia, I love me some honey.

Source about feds taking bees: http://www.naturalnews.com/035920_beekeeper_Illinois_raid.html

Well, that article isn't paranoid and biased at all.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
My wife called out to close all the windows because a huge swarm of bees was making its way up the street.

They flew slowly past, scaring pedestrians, and then made away over a house on the opposite side of the road.

Obviously they were swarming to find a new hive. An amazing sight! I've never before seen it happening.

flamethrower. enough said.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
A few years back I was at the Download Festival in Donington, heading over to the second stage to watch Static-X..

You deserve to be attacked by a swarm of bees for that alone.

No one desereves bees for that.

Being in Donnington isn't that bad...

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
A few years back I was at the Download Festival in Donington, heading over to the second stage to watch Static-X..

You deserve to be attacked by a swarm of bees for that alone.

There's nothing wrong with Static-X, besides, I was a teenager when Nu Metal was all the rage, so for me jumping into the pit for a Nu-Metal band has the same effect as an old guy reminiscing on his days as a child heading down to the sweet-shop on his penny-farthing to buy pear drops before heading off to the local farm to frolic among the hay-bales...