"Mom, there's some bees in the rose bushes!"

It was a relatively peaceful evening. The kids were playing outside in the yard, Mom was grilling on the front porch, the puppies (which I will get to in my next post) were romping around the lush, green grass, and the sun was shining its last few golden rays of light over our land before disappearing below the tree tops. Dad and I were inside doing various things. I may or may not have been on the computer and setting the table at roughly the same time. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Noah run up to Mom and tell her something. A minute later Mom comes in and says that there's a BUNCH of bees on the rose bush and she wants to take a picture of it. Then she showed Dad and I the pictures.

Dad was naturally startled as the protector of the house hold and immediately told everyone to come inside, then went to take a look at it himself. There were hundreds. And they hadn't been there a few days before. Dad started looking for someone to come get them, and then arranged for some friends to come the following morning. Until then, the front yard was more or less banned until the bees were gone. We moved the puppies and the dogs to the back yards so they wouldn't accidentally stir them up, and then thanked God that we hadn't stirred them up ourselves. The kids had been running around the rose bushes for a while before Noah noticed it, and anytime anyone could have upset them.

We figured that they could have been: (A) building a hive/headquarters there, or (B) just camping out there for a few days before moving away again. We found out it was most likely they would only be there temporarily. Anyway, some friends from church had been wanting some bees, so the came by with a neighbor who had worked with bees, carefully cut off the branches the bees were on, put it in a bucket, and drove off. Only one person got stung once and they didn't have any special gear on. Bees are like dogs and some other animals, I've been told, and can sense fear.  So if you stay calm you are less likely to get stung.

Anyway, they're all gone now, and we can run in the front yard again. :)

See you all later!

~Lindsey