The Bee Story

When I was a teenager, I used to go out to the country in Pennsylvania to my grandfather’s country home during the summer. The house was a small ranch-style house on a hill that my grandfather had built himself. The house had a cinder block sun porch built into the back part of the house. It had an exterior porch door that led outside and another door on the other side of the porch that led into the house.

One day, while walking inside from a day of target shooting, I noticed that a swarm of Yellow Jackets made a nest in the cinder blocks in corner of the sun porch. I thought to myself, “We can’t have a big bees nest right in the porch wall by the entrance. I better do something about that.” I figured that I would come back later that night to deal with the bees’ nest when all the bees were sure to be in the hive.

I waited until dark, grabbed a flashlight and a can of raid, and headed out. Once outside, I shined the flashlight onto the place where I saw bees exiting the building earlier that day from the front left corner of the porch. In the beam of the flashlight, a few bees could be seen crawling over one another at a crack in the block.

I popped the cap off of the can of bee-killer, and after pinching my flashlight between my shoulder and cheek, proceeded to spray the nest. As I sprayed, the bees were clearly getting agitated and flying around. One or two bees could be seen flying out from the crack, trying to get to safety, but falling to the ground dead after a few seconds of flight.

It seemed that this bee-spray was really working well. It had a pressurized spray that allowed me to shoot the stream right into the crack in the block, surely filling the nest with chemical death. Since there didn’t seem to be many bees flying out, I leaned into the area a bit closer and sprayed directly into the crack. More bees could be seen scrambling out and falling onto the ground dead.

Wow, this stuff is working a lot better than I anticipated. I figured any bees still in the nest would surely soon die from the spray. I though to myself, “Well, this job is done.” I turned around into the dark to make my way back into the building. I turned the corner trying not to trip over a concrete planter in the dark, opened the screen door, and headed into the porch.

As I entered the porch, I immediately realized that something was horribly wrong. In the darkness, I walked into what felt like a fuzzy cloud. Although I didn’t know it at that moment, that fuzzy cloud was hundreds of angry bees that filled the sun porch. It turns out that while I was spraying the nest, all the bees were traveling inward, and entering the porch though a small crack in the block on the inside. It was their only escape from my chemical attack outside. They were all inside the porch now and not very pleased with me.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I realized this, I was already covered in angry bees. I don’t remember all the stings but the first few hit me on the back of the neck and packed a pretty good wallop. After making some futile efforts to brush the bees off, I quickly made my way toward the inner door that led into the house and hopefully to safety.

I turned the knob of the inner door, and pushed. No joy. The door was locked. Just my luck. This must be how it all ends. I’ll be stung to death on the porch by a bunch of bees.

I banged on the door and screamed for help, knowing that I was definitely in a bad spot. Without some immediate assistance, I was definitely going down soon. While I was making my “locked-door discovery” I was still getting hit by the bees. Bam, Bam, Bam. I could feel the burning and swelling of the stings all over my body.

Finally, help arrived. My girlfriend, looking rather bewildered, came and opened the door. I blasted through the door opening, knocking her out of the way, coated in sting-happy bees. I peeled my clothes off as quickly as I could, ran through the house and jumped directly into the shower. As I washed bees off and killed them in the tub, I could hear the rest of my family outside the bathroom battling the bees that couldn’t hang on during my flight to the shower. I stood in the shower thinking about how good the cold water felt on my swollen skin.

Once I was safe and all the bees were dead, I started to count my stings. I had over fifteen stings on different parts of my body. The stings started to itch intensely and my heart was still racing with all of the venom that was in my system. Luckily I wasn’t allergic to bee stings, or I would have been toast.

A few hours after the whole ordeal, I slowly ventured outside to view the aftermath of the battle. There were dead bees everywhere. Except for a few that I mopped up afterwards with a fly swatter. It seems the bee spray made its way deep into the nest and most of the bees that attacked me were in the process of dying.

Despite the lumps I took, I estimate that I was clearly the victor in this contest. The hundreds of bees that carpeted the floor and the absence of the nest clearly showed that. However, my respect for these little fighters carries over to the present. Every time I see a yellow jacket at a picnic or a pool, I remember our little battle on the sun porch.