THE BIRDS AND THE BEES

June 3rd, 2008

bee-swarm.jpg Our recent house repairs and renovations have turned up plenty of wildlife. Some unwelcome furry critters, some nasty old termites and last Thursday, we looked outside my office window and saw this on our back wall.

This is the second bee swarm we’ve had. At our last house about 40,000 bees (estimated) swarmed our barbecue grill and built a substantial hive in a few hours. I can’t bear the thought of killing such useful insects (unlike termites) so we found a beekeeper to come and remove them. I recently had a friend tell me she couldn’t find anyone to take away live bees but we looked in the yellow pages and found someone who came out in an hour.  Bees have alarmingly disappeared recently, endangering such crops as almonds, so I was relieved to recycle them to a bee farm.

We recently had our electrical panel redone and apparently they left a few small holes. The queen got in and the work began. The beekeeper told us to stay inside (didn’t have to ask me twice) and we watched as he located the queen and put her in a box. The vast majority of bees follow because without their queen, they’re nothing! But many remained and so he released some smoke, which helped encourage some others to move on.

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However, a group remained. We were told that they were the bees out collecting nectar who returned to the spot and wondered what the heck happened to their queen. We called and were told that they should be gone by Saturday – that they’d find a new queen – but to call if they weren’t. Actually this is Tuesday and there are no 10 bees remaining, but we haven’t called because they aren’t really bothering anything.

We do have a busy group of bees working in the garden on the side of our house – lavender and roses there.  And there’s a lot (too much) clover in our backyard. That would be some yummy honey.

As for the birds, I had news from my friends at the Shaw School in U.K. They email from time to time and I visited there in March, where I met their hamster named Humphrey.

Apparently Humphrey recently got out of his cage (it is suspected he had a little human help) but after 24 hours they found him and he’s doing fine. They also had some baby birds hatch in a nest outside a window – they had a video camera so the students could watch the eggs’ progress. When they hatched, the children named them Betty and Birney. I have never been so honored! I’m sure they’re well out of the nest now. Bon voyage, Betty and Birney!

I do love birds. In fact, I talk to the birds in the yard outside my office. Some of them – like the mockingbirds – talk back.

When I’m out of state and I talk about our wildlife in the backyard (skunks, possums, squirrels, r___s – and twice I’ve seen coyotes in the front yard), people say, “Oh, so you don’t live in L.A.” But I do. L.A. is not all concrete. It is lush, verdant, mountainous and we are at the bottom of a canyon with two wildlife preserves at the top. We have avocados, lemons and limes. Our neighbors have oranges, apricots, avocados and figs. The house behind us has a banana tree. Animals love these things as much as people.

Our backyard is a paradise and completely private. But we live on a busy street. Nobody really understands L.A.!

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