Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Bees, bees, everywhere!

 Yesterday morning hubby called me at school.  That by itself is unusual as he knows I'm in class and I cannot talk.  so, he also sent a text..."bee swarm above front door.  Be careful."  I had heard bees buzzing before I left for work.  I thought they were up in our mesquite tree, so I looked that morning.  I didn't see any in the tree, so I figured I was hearing things (...again...).  Nope.  Not this time!  By the time I got home, yup...there was a HUGE swarm right above our door and we had to dodge bees to get into our house!  Hubby actually had one fly into his mouth!  He promptly spit it out and ran in and slammed the door shut.  They weren't agressive at all.  In fact, I went out and fed the cats and gathered up all the birdseed and bird feeders figuring that hubby was busy calling an exterminator.  Instead, he called an actual beekeeper who came in his white outfit, complete with his fogger!  The old man smoked the bees, vacuumed them all up, put up a bee deterrent in the hole in the attic wire mesh where they were getting in, and said he'd return in a week for a follow-up because there were so many!  He put the bees on his front seat and then asked us to tell him about our mustangs!  It turns out, he has a 38 year old mustang!  The horse is out in a pasture in Banning, CA, on Indian land!  Isn't that amazing?  So, we talked with him for about another 1/2 hour (it was getting dark by then).  He only has one assistant, a woman, and he just helped her get her first horse!  He actually asked me if I wanted to give him one of my mustangs, so which I replied, "HELL NO!" (...shaking head...) My mustangs? Er, uh, NO WAY!  I looked this afternoon and every single bee is GONE!  Phew!  I am glad they weren't the African ones.  Those he said he does kill because they are just too agressive.  Oh, and he promised to bring us some honey from the bees he has already collected.  In fact, he asked which kind of honey and hubby said tamarisk honey because our son has allergies and since we have so many tamarisk trees in the valley, we figured that would be best to give to him!   :-)

4 comments:

GeckoGirl said...

We too have bee swarms around our valley though none lately that I've heard about. My favorite honey in orange blossom, but my husband says that blackberry honey is also good.

Barb said...

I'm so pleased you didn't exterminate them. Poor bees are having a tough time of it lately.

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

Interesting how the beekeeper collected them. I noticed that we had quite a large swarm around our blossoming apple trees in Nevada, and then they were gone the next day. Just passing through, I guess. I was walking back and forth under one tree, but they didn't bother me, so I knew they weren't the African Killers.

RoeH said...

I just watched a beekeeper get rid of bees from my next door neighbor's roof a month or so ago. It was interesting. I (naturally) went out and took some pics but none of them turned out so I deleted them all. Next time.