Nature is Good for You

I have liked Golden Retrievers since the first time I ran into one back when I was about 22 or 23 years old.  It was as friendly and calm a dog as one could ever wish for. 

If you want to know a little more about this breed, click on the link below. There are a couple of nice short videos on the site, which are quite funny. One shows how intelligent they are and the other displays their "soft" mouths.  


Golden Retrievers

The girl who owned that first Golden Retriever I mentioned, told me that the breed was originally from Russia. I guess she was thinking about this breed.   
The only thing I heard about them was that they were not very bright dogs, as a rule. Similar to what I heard about Weimaraners. I am no expert on dogs so I can't actually say what is correct and what isn't. I generally like mutts. 
And all the dogs seemed so happy, pleased to be helping. 

Yesterday, we had a bee hive removed from a window box (?) on our house. I don't know the correct word, but it looks something like this although it is deeper, about 8-t0-10 inched deep.



I started noticing a bee or two in our house about two weeks ago. I didn't think much of it as with doors opening and closing around here, it is common for all sorts of bugs to get in. Furthermore, we have a lot of different herbs growing in our back yard and bees are common. Have been for years.

But the bees kept coming and I finally found a small crack between an indoor window sill and the wall. That turned out to be their point of egress.

The extermination company came by and confirmed they were honey bees and needed to be removed. The company did not handle such operations so we got hold of a local bee-removal outfit to do the job. Apparently, the City of Plano strongly encourages people to have a professional handle this in order to preserve the bee population.

In any case, the technician came in his bee suit and went to work. He had to cut away a portion of the window box and when he got in, he found the hive was bigger than we thought. After removing it all, he had something over a 5 gallon bucket full of honeycomb and honey. Unfortunately, we could not use it, because when I first noticed the crack in the sill, I sprayed it with some insecticide to keep more bees from entering the house.

Apparently, there are many such hives across Plano. The man who removed our hive had been working since early morning and only got to us at about 6 PM.

Surprisingly, the bees were not very aggressive. 

Had the honeycomb been somewhere in the yard, I would have left it. But leaving such a thing in a home is dangerous. The nest keeps expanding and, once it gets into the walls, will cause a lot of damage. Not to mention the house would eventually be overrun with bees. 

We also have plenty of wasps around here. Mud daubers and red wasps are common. I see them just about everyday. If I find a nest, I run for the insecticide and let it rip. I will sometime burns nests of paper wasps. 

About 30 years ago we were living in Sacramento CA. My wife, at that time, decided we needed to do recycling of yard clippings, grass and the like. Without much enthusiasm I procured all the assorted stuff on the condition that I would not be the only one turning the pile. Needless to say, about two months went by and I was the only one working the recycle pile. I did what any one would do and just said, screw it. A year or more passes and wife says, how's the recycle pile doing? I suggested she go look. She comes back and says it looks like its ready to turn---------duh. I hadn't turned it in over a year. So, my youngest son and I trapse out with shovels to turn the pile. I shoved the spade into the pile and was rewarded with a loud buzzzz. Slowly a few bees rose from the pile and circled around. My son and I backed away and went into the house, leaving the spade stuck in the pile. I called exterminator as these were not honeybees.

Mutt and Jeff showed up that afternoon. They attacked the pile with gusto, mutt holding a spray hose and Jeff with a spray can keeping the bees off Mutt. About 100 gallons of spray later Mutt announced the nest was dead. He dug into it and must have killed about 500 bees. Wife never asked me to recycle again. I consider it a win. 

We must have had a thousand or more honey bees before the bee man showed up. I checked yesterday and there were still a few lingerers who were probably out collecting pollen while the nest was being removed. I checked again this morning and there was nary a one. 

Fun to watch.

Elk Ball?