Wind, Rain and Bees

They put the bee boxes out in the raspberry field behind our house today. I noticed a lot of bees swarming around a tree on the side of the garage earlier in the day. Mitch came home from work and spotted this when he went to close the gate that blew open. He said I had to come take a look...



I guess they got caught in the sudden change of weather and couldn't make it back to the hives in the bee boxes in the wind and rain. They pulled down a couple branches of the tree and are packed into these columns....waiting out the storm...that's a lot of bees! It's amazing I got as close as I did. I'm having flashbacks of being on the raspberry picker in middle school and getting stung on the lip. My face swelled up so bad I looked like the elephant girl. I couldn't drink without a straw. My eyes were swollen mostly shut. I was pretty much unrecognizable for days. We went camping with my mom's whole family and nobody could stand to look at me. My cousin Jason would turn his head in the opposite direction when he talked to me. Talk about mortifying! Needless to say I developed an intense fear of bees for a long time after that. It's improved with the years but this many in one place brings it all back. To this day I can even tell you the exact row of raspberries I was in when I got stung. Since Sam has a bit of an allergy I think we'll just have him keep his distance too, just seeing the picture was just fine with him.