Bee-otch

It lies in my driveway like so much tripe - a Frank Gehry confection of wax and honey as long as my arm. Honeycomb! I stare at it with the consternation of a Taino Indian watching sails manifest from clouds on the horizon. Here it is, October, and all the long summer I'd been out and about, searching my tree canopy for blog-worthy photos: hawk, squirrel, cardinal, jay. I'd seen nary a bee, nor heard anything approaching a buzz. But there is no getting around the fact of this candied asteroid crash-landed in my driveway. Honey, at least a quart, flows from the cracked corpus, treacling down my driveway like blood in a crime scene photo -- a lewd invitation to ants. Mortally wounded bees twitch and fret their last, commending their spirits to the great queen of the heavens, whose light greets them at the end of a hundred tiny tunnels - eternity through a compound eye. Their tiny bees carcasses twitch and curl, giving up the ghost, as others right themselves and perform their preflight damage assessments amid the elm duff, no doubt working out the intricate choreography of culpability and wondering how they'll ever manage to dance their way out of this disaster. They buzz around the wreckage, collecting data, and rise . . . to where?

Reality dawns slowly and my guts turn to water as a fat drip of honey plops, wet and sticky, at my feet.  I can't even make myself look up for fear of the Damoclesian horror. The honeycomb in my driveway, I realize, is only a fragment of what must still be hanging in the elm and oak canopy directly above my head -- how far above me? -- and if this piece (at least two pounds) is just a crumb. . .

I shudder and back slowly into my garage, closing the door behind me. I get in my car and open the garage door with the remote, backing out to the end of the driveway, where I can clearly see a brown beard, tho

usands of bees buzzing around a hive the size of my chest and torso, a giant heart beating beneath an oak limb 20 feet in the air. Only one sort of bee builds its hive in the open like that, and as Winnie the Pooh so eloquently opined, it's: "the wrong sort of bee." Apis mellifera scutellata -- the africanized wild honey bee, better known by the frightening moniker: "Killer Bees." Beer me. Time to call in the cavalry. Anybody know a good bee wrangler?

 
The good stuff:

I didn't get stung

I may get some fresh honey out of the deal

Got a really cool story to tell
Best Halloween prop on the block

My parents were here to see it

Great DIY fantasy involving my neighbor, a six pack, a hazmat suit, a chainsaw, a large trashcan, good aim, and a roach fogger
Good blog photo
Was wondering if I'd ever get a chance to photograph wild honeycomb up close
There are people who relocate bees for a living
It didn't fall on my car