The Day of the Bees

The Day of the Bees - Chapter 1: Origin of the Bees

We may never really know where they came from. At first we all tried to ignore them. What harm are a few bees? They make honey and pollinate the flowers. Bees are good. How Todd, Melissa, and I would learn to regret those sentiments and long for the days of joking about who had the most bees in their apartment. Two or three bees you can joke about. Two or Three Million isn't as funny.

I always had some misgivings about living in city with a huge military presence. Someday I'll learn to listen to those little voices (assuming a pharmaceutical company doesn't patent a drug that gets rid of them first). Whether it was a biological weapon that went horribly wrong, an experiment on "expendable ex-pats" to see how much we could tolerate or a secret nuclear test in the sewers of Bangalore we may never know. Won't the human race ever learn, how many times does Godzilla need to destroy Tokyo before we get the message: radiation and small seemingly harmless animals, especially reptiles and insects, don't mix. Oh sure I know what you're thinking, gamma radiation created the Incredible Hulk and he is basically good. True as that may be, are you willing to take the chance? Is one Incredible Hulk really worth a world overrun by Godzillas, Rodans, Mothras, and King Ghidorahs just to name a few? If you think the next time Mothra prepares to flap his wings to destroy an entire Japanese island the Hulk is going to be there to stop him you are living in a fantasy world. I for one prefer a Hulk and Godzilla-free world.

But I digress. Back to the bees. Bees by the thousands; by the millions swarming, buzzing, diving, attacking, dying.
Kamakaze bees not afraid to sacrifice themselves on my balcony to ensure I stay trapped in my apartment. Will we be (no pun intended) alright. Who can say.

We've called on the valiant Zen Gardens Maintenance Brigade but as to who will win the war - it's too soon to say...


The Day of the Bees - Chapter 2: The Maintence Brigade Counter Attacks or We've Tried Nothing and We're All out of Ideas.
The Zen Gardens crack maintenance wasted no time springing into action. Only 2 days after being notified about the bees they were almost ready to begin thinking about trying to write something in a log book. I was unaware of this but evidently bees are deathly afraid of log books. As successful as this tactic should have been, the bees didn't leave. This is probably due to the fact that they are out-of-town bees, at least that is one explanation we've been given. "No need to worry, this is the bee migration season, they are just migrating." Huh? At this point I could only think, "if you knew about the bee migration season why didn't you do something proactively to prevent Zen Gardens from becoming a 5-star bee rest stop?"

After sticking faithfully to their motto "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" the maintenance brigade was forced to call HQ - GCORP! (No kidding, this is really the name of the company that built the building, it really does sound military). Like any good government organization GCORP promised to do "whatever it takes" to get rid of the bees including but not limited to painting the building with bee repellent paint (once again, I'm not kidding). Also, like any good government agency the start date is yet to be determined but you don't want to rush into anything like that. My guess is that in 100,000 years when future archaelogists excavate the ruins of Zen Gardens the future incarnatin of GCORP will be getting ready to begin thinking about noting in a log book that Zen Gardens needs painting.

For now the strategy is to stick a wad of newspaper on the end of a long wooden stick, light it on fire and burn out the swarms of bees as they are reported. Not as they arrive, that would require the maintenance brigade to actively inspect the building. This of course is a ludicrous suggestion as they do not have a Bee Inspection Log Book.