Eat Your Heart Out Marge Simpson
Oh, sure, Marge Simpson has always sported a beehive hairdo. But doe it have real bees? A Pennsylvania woman almost had a real one.
BANGOR, Pa. - A woman was dragging a lounge chair into the shade of a tree when a sudden buzzing told her it was already occupied — by thousands of bees. "They were swarming like crazy and I ran into the house," Sheila Sabatine said.
Though the bees hummed busily about, Sabatine was not stung, nor was her husband, Larry Sabatine, who also inspected the football-sized swarm before the two called Bethlehem beekeeper Joe Kuka.
Kuka said swarming bees generally are not aggressive, though he added, "I'm sure if she would have sat down in that chaise lounge she would have got up in a hurry."
Kuka said there were about 10,000 bees in the 3-pound swarm under the chair. He said he was glad the Sabatines did not spray the bees, since colonies are already being diminished by disease. Kuka took the bees home, where he keeps 40 hives.
Diminished by disease? 40 hives? Second bee swarm story in as many days coming out of Pennsylvania? The first was from the Western part of the state, this one from the East. Are you beginning to wonder if something is not quite adding up?
By Sylvia, Thursday, 19 July , 2007 @ 10:09 pm
We’ve had the largest crops of fruit on our trees in years, and up in the garden this afternoon the air was literally buzzing because there were so many bees enjoying the flowers. Swarms of yellow jackets, too. Bad enough that I put my hair up and cover it with a scarf because they *like* me. There must be some kind of hobo marking on me that says, “She kept hives of bees in her teens.”