Gisele and I are in Snowbird, Utah for 5 nights. Snowbird is a ski resort about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, at about 8500 feet. The weather is very nice, but a little warmer than I expected.
I came up to attend a Botany convention. My friend Les and I are giving a presentation on a program I am developing that can help convert old style plant specimens to a database.
It’s very beautiful up here.
Gisele left early this morning for her annual month in France. She is only taking 3 weeks of class this year, in the city of Tours. The other week will be spent traveling around the country.
Angela happens to be there at the same time, so Gisele will get to spend some time with her sister.
After 4 days of vacuuming up bees, I decided it was time to get serious.
I went to Lowe’s and bought a can of “Wasp and Hornet Spray”. They can’t advertise that it kills bees because they are protected, but they assured me it would work fine.
I found the most likely place for a hive — it’s a box-like extension to the wall where the dryer hose goes out. I drilled a 3/8″ hole through the drywall, stuck the spray nozzle in the hole, and sprayed for a few seconds. Then I quickly covered the hole with duct tape.
In a few seconds a gentle buzz turned into a loud hum that grew until it was a frightening roar. Thousands of bees must have been beating their wings, trying to find an enemy to attack. The vacuum cleaner was sucking at the outside entrance, and could barely keep up with the swarm as they flew outside. Many of them got past, and we could see them swarming around the porch light.
I sprayed poison into a few other nearby locations, and got more reactions in a couple of them. But it was clear that the first shot had been on target.
It took almost an hour before the roar died into a faint humming sound, and we went to bed.
This morning I sprayed a little more in, just testing if there were any live bees, but there was no reaction. So I cut a hole through the drywall into the box. Here’s what I saw through the hole:
I had reached in and broken a small piece of the honeycomb off before I took the picture, but most of it is intact here. The two bees on the comb are dead. Look carefully in the bottom and you can see lots more dead bees — about 2 inches thick. There were even a few larvae, though they’re hard to see in this picture.
Here’s what it looked like after I got it all out:
That’s a lot of comb to have been created in the few days they have been there, especially since I have been continually decimating their workers. I guess they had been as busy as bees.
And here’s a close-up:
There’s honey in that comb, but not a lot. I was sucking up most of the bees before they had a chance to get back in the hive, so they didn’t deliver much nectar. Even this wasn’t edible, because it was soaked with insecticide.
Finally, here’s a picture of the vacuum cleaner with dead bees.
The canister is 12 inches diameter, and the bees are 3 inches deep (with a little drywall dust on top of that where I cleaned up after cutting the hole). That’s about 340 cubic inches of bees. Assuming a 10 x 10 x 10 cube of 1000 bees is about 4 inches on a side, or 64 cubic inches, there must be around 1000*340/64 or over 5,000 bees. And that’s probably a low estimate.
Things are quiet in my house again. I feel a little bad about killing off so many bees, but I didn’t want to take any chances. The bee man who came on the previous call said that he doesn’t try to save the bees any more, so they would have died anyway. I guess the local beekeepers have plenty.
I am having problems with both birds and bees.
First, the birds: My peaches are ripening on the tree in my back yard, and there are lots of bites and nibbles. The worst part is that birds will eat them at a greener state than I will, so they spoil them before they are ripe enough for me.
I put up a net over the tree, but birds, with their excellent eyesight, can find any little hole in the net to get in. Unfortunately, once they get in under the net they aren’t nearly as good at finding the hole again to get out. So each morning I get up to find 2-3 birds stuck inside the net, sometimes with feathers tangled up in the mesh. I have to raise up one side of the net and then chase them out. At least 2-3 birds a day don’t eat as many peaches as however many were getting to them before, but I’m selfish and want them all to myself. Little by little I’ll find and patch those holes.
You remember a couple of weeks ago that I had bees in my garage. I called a bee expert who came and judged that they were just scouting and would probably move on. I vacuumed them up and he fixed a few holes, and that was that.
Yesterday we noticed hundreds of bees again, near where they had been before, but in an area untouched by the bee man. The stucco wall extends out slightly from the foundation, and there are little holes on the bottom, presumably to let any water out that may get in. The bees were going in and out of one of those holes as if they lived there. So I set up the vacuum cleaner hose an inch or so away from the bee-hole and just let it run. It was fascinating to sit and watch as bee after bee got too close and disappeared with a “thwip”, sometimes several in a second. It didn’t take long (an hour, maybe) until there were very few bees left buzzing around outside. The inside of the vacuum had hundreds–maybe a thousand bees.
The beauty of the vacuum method of bee removal is that when a bee is stressed or injured, it secretes a pheromone that excites other bees and incites them to attack. But with the vacuum, the bee and any pheromones are immediately removed from the area before they know anything is amiss. The other bees never realize that anything is wrong, though I’m sure eventually they are bothered by all their sisters gone missing. They hive must become a lonely place, like an old Twilight Zone episode where all the people suddenly disappear from the earth.
It was just about 100 days ago that I found Apollo in the throes of a seizure. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with Valley Fever and put on twice-a-day doses of Fluconazole.
Initially his infection level was 32, severely infected. This week we were informed that his level is down to 2 — barely infected!
The vet wants to keep him on the drugs for another 90 days and then test again. If he’s clear, he can stop taking drugs and be called cured.
I think he deserves an A+ for his first 100 days!
We’ve had a swarm of bees move into the attic and garage. Gisele noticed them swarming around a small hole in the wall this afternoon, and by this evening (6:45) there are hundreds of them in the garage on the ceiling and walls. We can’t get to the cars.
I called a bee service in the afternoon and they said they would be here in the early evening. I just called and he said he was really busy; could he do it tomorrow? NO, Please!!!!
A few have made it into the house, but only 3 or 4. I stepped on one — it stung me!
I’ll update after he gets here — hopefully soon!
The last test results on Apollo came back positive for Valley Fever. In fact she said the test came back strongly positive, so it’s fairly serious.
Dogs in the Southwest get Valley Fever just like humans do, and as in humans usually just infects the lungs. But in some cases it will break out and infect other parts of their bodies. When it infects the brain it can cause seizures.
With treatment the prognosis is good, but he will be on expensive anti-fungal medication for at least a year and a half, and possibly the rest of his life.
I’m not sure if this is better than epilepsy, but at least there is a treatment.
Apollo has epilepsy, or at least appears to have the dog version.
I was on my computer when I heard a thumping sound outside. I found Apollo stretched out on the ground on his side, with his front and rear legs swinging around like he was trying to run. His hind legs kept hitting some roof tiles I had piled up there, and that is what I had heard. He didn’t respond to me at first, but within a minute or so he got shakily to his feet, though he kept falling when he tried to walk.
I got him to the vet within 5 minutes, and by that time he was already steadier on his feet, but salivating and pacing around agitatedly.
The vet ran some blood tests looking for possible causes, and most of them have come back negative. We’re still waiting for the Valley Fever and Tick Fever tests to come back, but she said that 90% probability it was epilepsy, or the dog version of it. Apparently it is not uncommon, especially in Siberian Huskies, and this case showed the classic symptoms.
If it happens more than once a month then we will have to put him on anti-convulsants. Less than that, and we just try to keep him from harming himself or others when he seizes, and live with it.
It was a scary sight, seeing him on the ground like that. The first thought that went through my mind was that he had got into some insecticide or anti-freeze, or that someone had poisoned him. It was a great relief when he seemed to recover so quickly.
I’ll post an update if either of the final tests come out positive, but otherwise assume it is just a genetic condition.
For several years, every Monday Gisele has driven to Scottsdale for a small advanced French class that met in the home of one of the students, Angela Morley. Gisele mentioned to me that Angela, an elderly lady, was a composer and had won some awards.
Angela died last Monday, and I looked into her past a little bit. It turns out that the awards she had received were 11 Emmy nominations, 3 Emmy awards and 2 Oscar Nominations. It turns out she collaborated with John Williams on the score for several movies, including ET, Home Alone, Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back and Schindler’s List. She wrote the score for the animated movie Watership Down. She wrote the scores for several TV shows, including Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Hotel, Cagney and Lacy, Wonder Woman and others. She wrote many arrangements for Julie Andrews, Mel Torme, Placido Domingo and others. She arranged music that Itzhak Perlman and Yo Yo Ma played at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony.
There is a small memorial service on Saturday for family and close friends that Gisele has been invited to. Only after her death did Gisele realize that her friend and classmate had lived such a productive and illustrious life.
I posted previously how Apollo can run beside the bike, using the special “Springer” attachment. As he gets older and stronger, he is taking on his hereditary role and has started to pull the bike.
As we leave the driveway, he is running as fast as he can — up to 15 MPH with my feet resting on the pedals. When we first started, a year or so ago, he would run for maybe 100 meters before he slowed down and I had to pedal. Then he would run beside the bike, but not pull it.
Little by little he has pulled the bike further and further. He runs best when there’s someone else along on another bike to ride out in front and encourage him.
Best run so far: A couple of days ago he pulled Derek for 2.8 miles, with me on another bike encouraging him along. Derek pedaled a total of maybe 5 revolutions that whole time; once when Apollo saw in interesting tree and had to be discouraged, and once going around a sharp corner where he had to slow down too much. Otherwise, the husky puppy provided all the power.
After the first quarter of a mile or so the pace was slow — a trot of maybe 7-8 miles per hour, but he just kept going. We were amazed.
When we got back home (after Derek pedaled another mile or so with Apollo running alongside), he took a big drink, then collapsed for a few hours with a satisfied look in his eyes.
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