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Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Giant Bees

Recently MRS Bunkermeister and I visited Hobby Lobby.  She needed yarn for some project she was knitting and I never miss an opportunity to look for anything cool.
I always check the silicone molds used to make candy, or candles, or other stuff.
I found this mold of hexagon shapes.
Naturally I had to buy it for my giant bee collection.
It's really a nice size and less than $3.  And of course, I have a giant bee collection, thanks to my friend COL Jim he was kind enough to pick up some for me years ago.
 

6 comments:

Legion4 said...


Great find ... love the honey comb ! Nice bee models ... But I hat bees !!!!!

banzai55 said...

You have a giant bee collection?????

Terrement said...

I'm a gardener. Bees are essential for pollination, needed to grow food and flowers. I LOVE them! (except for the Africanized killer bees).

But hornets?

Like the yellowjackets? (not exclusively but a great place to start).

They are aggressive and will sting for no reason (other than today is a day that ends with a "y").

They will chase you.
They bring friends in the area.
If you are near a nest, they will swarm you.

If a bee stings you it costs them their life. They leave their stinger in you.
Hornets? Stinger stays with the hornet and they can repeatedly sting you.

I'm lucky. I was doing some clean-up gardening early last spring when it was still fairly cool out. Bees, wasps, and hornets are all sluggish because of the cold. So when I was digging out a plant that died over the winter I apparently disturbed a nest. Thankfully,
1. It was near an entrance, not near the major part of the nest. So I disturbed the ones in that proximity and the entire nest didn't immediately swarm.
2. It was fairly cool out so they were more sluggish than on a warm day.
3. I had a thick jacket on so many of the upper body stings never hit me.
4. I got the hell out of Dodge before they came in force.

Even still, I had over a dozen solid hits. Not very pleasant. Been stung by yellowjackets previously in my life but they were mostly by an isolated individual hornet who would quit after getting in multiple stings in quick succession. But even a cold mini-swarm is a lot worse.

In all my decades of gardening, I've never had a bee sting.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

We have a lot of bees here, our gardener actually keeps bees on his property. He set up a hive box and captured a swarm of bees on one of our trees and a few months later brought us some honey from "our" bees.

Thanks for reading Legion4.

Bunkermeister

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

banzai55 of course I have a giant bee collection, you don't???

Once I saw Mysterious Island it seemed necessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RYQA34XSN4 See 1:25 in the video.

Bunkermeister

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

Terrement, I am glad you dodge a bullet on that one.

I stepped on a bee when I was about 40 and it is the only insect sting I have ever had, thank God.

Thanks for reading.
Bunkermeister