Bees: The Rest of the Story

A couple weeks ago I posted about the bees that seemed to be setting up shop at my local airport. Last Thursday, 29 Mar, I was taking a friend up for a tour of LA and heard and saw more.

First, when we got there the formerly bee-covered Cirrus was gone. We were told that the owner had ripped the cover off – bees and all – fired up the engine and gone to another airport. This left a few perturbed bees running around SMO, but though we were around for a while, none of them bothered us. They tell me that most of the bees in LA county are africanized, so that’s pretty good luck.

Other than coming back and finding that the bees had taken my parking space that was my whole involvement. But the story I heard was that our friend with the bee-covered plane had proceeded out to his destination and only found a few intrepid bees still gripping his aircraft on arrival. On departure to return to SMO, a few more wayward bees had appeared. When he returned to the ramp, however, the remaining local bees began returning to the plane and re-establishing the clump.

After the clump began re-forming they summoned a beekeeper who, I’m told, vacuumed them up – queen and all – and there’s been peace in the valley since then.

I would have loved to see the little buggers clomp back on to the plane on return, though.

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