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An enormous bee

Ian_Davies

Ian_Davies

Apprentice
Joined
May 7, 2023
Messages
1,615
Location
Hampshire
So I'm crashed out on my La-Z-Boy, letting my Pad Thai settle, looking forward to the afternoon racing, when the most enormous bee flies in through the open French window.

I'm talking huge - at least 18 hands - bigger than a Grand National winner, a house or the Empire State Building.

In fact, almost as big as Maurice's wallet or Walsworth's best-selling "Ten Million Ways To Insult Ian Davies Christmas Compendium."

Naturally I'm terrified - I'd have hidden behind the sofa if it wasn't in the corner of the room against a wall - but I was a really brave soldier and I somehow managed to shoo it back outside.

True story.
 
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I don't think you're taking this alarming tale sufficiently seriously, frankly - I was in severe danger and was extremely brave!
 
I'm seeing more and more stories of these tropical types that seem to be invading our land, especially the South of England.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a nature lover.

The idea of taking my dog for a walk though and bumping into a Burmese Python or Black Mamba I find quite distressing.

Henceforth, and yes, thread on a tangent, but what type of person actually embraces bringing in these hideous foreign creatures to England?

Should the old powers-that-be start banning procedures?

Snakes should be for museums and nature reserves, etc. People should not be able to own them I say.

As you can tell, I've got a bee in my bonnet about this!
 
Reminds me of Alexei Sayle mocking the Greater South London middle classes back in the day.

"It's so sad that my little boy is growing up and has never seen a Tiger as London Zoo hasn't got one."

"You have no right to expect to see a Tiger if you live in CROYDON - in fact, you have no right to expect to see a Tiger anywhere outside INDIA!"
 
:)

Bees do not scare me in the least because I know they are our friends and usually only sting if they feel threatened.

I also discovered in my last house that you also get bees that don't sting at all and are completely harmless.

Sounds like your bee was a queen bee that got a wee bit lost so I'm glad you got her back into the open where she'll find her way back to the hive, unless she was dying, in which case she'll find a quiet place to shuffle off.

I never kill spiders either. I always find a way of getting them back outside.

Now, wasps are a different matter. I'd take an industrial-sized can of Raid to the vicious wee basterts.
 
Ha yeah, I look after spiders, DO.

I was reliably informed flushing them down the toilet can lead to a horrible drowning, (you'd have thought I would have known that already), so I always get a wee tissue or alike and put them in the garden.
 
Was this the critter? A queen buff-tailed bumblebee, the largest of the bumblebees, over an inch long

This is a good time of year to see queen bees and wasps on the wing as they're emerging from hibernation and in search of nest sites

queen-buff-tailed-bumblebee-bombus-terrestris-v0-bg5wh4t3abeb1.jpg
 
Err, TMI, far TMI, tbh, Maurice! 😂

It was a really big bee!

It barely got through the French window!

I showed extreme courage!

And humanity!

I deserve a medal!

(Or, better still, a Tesco Meal Deal For Life voucher).
 
My last dog was very allergic to wasp stings so I’m assuming my current dog is, too. But the other year wasps started nesting in the wall at the back of my house. Couldn’t open any windows for fear of them coming into the house or finding their way in another way. So last year I put up a couple of waspinators and, thus far, they seem to have worked. When I worked at a medical centre I had wasps all over the dispensary. A nightmare because they’d be hiding behind the bottles of tablets ( it was before everything had to be blister packed). Couldn’t work out how they were getting in but it turned out the nest was in the loft and they were coming in through the tiny hole where a wire went to the burglar alarm sensor. This lasted for weeks before they eventually agreed to send out some pest control people ( my boss was the tightest person I’ve ever known).
 
Extravagances like supermarket meal deals are hardly symptomatic of your average tightwad.

You're obviously some kind of walking contradiction.
 
Ian_Davies said:
Hold my beer! (well, Coca Cola, bought at a discounted rate).

No one, but no one, is tighter with money than me, Maureen! 😂
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Bet you don’t save your bath water to flush down the loo or use the water from your hot water bottle to water the garden. Or, if you boil too much water for a cuppa put it in a flask to use later ( I think working with him for twenty years, some of it must have rubbed off on me).And my boss was much tighter than me! I used to give him hay from my ponies stable for his garden on condition that he’d give me some of the strawberries he used it for but I never did get any.
 
My brother talks about when he used to use the milk from his cornflakes for his morning coffee and the water from his boiled egg for his tea.

One of my mother's mantra's was, 'Waste not, want not.'

Another thing she used to say if any of us left any of our dinner (which was very seldom), "Just think of those poor starving children in Africa who haven't eaten for days!"

Fortunately, I was usually on hand to ensure any leftovers did not get binned. Mrs O still refers to me as her personal waste disposal unit. I'm not averse to clearing her plate if we're out for a meal.
 
So, another mahoosive bee flew through my open French window earlier this week.

I was a LOT calmer this time, I banished all thoughts of going on ebay and trying to secure a "Buy It Now" deal on an Uzi and remembered all that stuff Maurice said about bees being our friends and that whole honey, Winnie The Pooh, wholesome thing he was probably alluding to.

I instead watched it do a couple of "circuits" (NOT "laps," modern commentators please note!) of my Kitchen/Living area before it departed from whence it came.

I've never been so at peace with nature!
 
trudij said:
Wouldn’t boiled egg water be eggy? I can imagine using it for pasta or something similar, but not for a drink…
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“An old wives tale explains warts coming from touching frogs or putting your hand into the water used to boil eggs. It is now known that warts come from a human papilloma virus, which is NOT found in either frogs or hard-boiled egg water!”
I’m still not prepared (as an old wife) to risk it…
 
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