Bees in my light fixture
I thought a light bulb had burned out in the lighting fixture in the ceiling. The light bulb was fine -- dead bees in the glass cup were blocking out the light. (This photo shows only about 1/3 of the bees -- the rest fell on the floor when I took out the glass cup.)
the latest
latest episodes
umm..... wat. that's like an entire hive of bees. why were they so interested in the light fixture?
wait, what?
aaaaAAAAAGGHHH!
I'm not overly afraid of bees, but that photo is just totally freaking me the hell out.
So it's YOUR FAULT all the bees died! Jeez, Mark.
you might have a beehive in your ceiling or in the walls between the drywall somewhere... sometimes they do that. SAVE THE BEES. we need 'em.
When life gives you a light fixture full of bees, make muffins.
must've been scary
Messed up! When I first glanced at the picture before reading the headline, I thought it was a bowl of wrapped candies or something.
Do you suppose this sort of thing is why bees are dying off? The hive instinct gone bad?
If a hive is living in your walls or ceiling and there's a light leaking from the fixture into the attic, then over time many bees will follow that light as a way out of the hive. Then they get confused, dry out and die in the fixture. Also, if they were entering the building through a hole that got filled they all would be desperate for a light source to escape. Some building walls can easily end up with hive of at least 50,000 bees. The bee keeper told us we have well of 50k in our kitchen wall at work. We can hear them buzzing all day.
So that's why they're not in the cup. They're all in your light fixture instead.
Owned.
The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.
So the obvious question is......WTF are you going to do about your bee problem!?!?!?!
We already trapped out the living bees and they are happily buzzing in a hive.
Lots of bees-knees! agree with above post, you have bees man, somewhere. Find a good bee removal service that is licensed and insured, and get them outta there.
BEADS??
I'm impressed that you didn't drop the glass cup, Mark.
Sweet merciful Jesus...
Next time use lightning bugs, it might help you save on your electric bill.
Mark, you likely have a hive in the ceiling above or somewhere nearby.
You should probably try to locate it and figure out whether you can co-exist with it or not.
It's usually not a good idea to let them live in the ceiling although they could conceivably be good neighbors in a wall cavity. I know a couple who didn't do anything about the hive in their ceiling until it started bulging and raining honey. It was very expensive to get rid of the bees at that point. And replace the ceiling... And the walls... And the flooring...
If you have any friends in the area who get along with bees (I am not in your area) you might be able to move the hive to a nice bee box and start beekeeping.
OK, I see I was a little late on that post!
Assuming you got the queen, Mark, then good luck with your new hobby! Did you feed the dead bees to your chickens?
I'm pretty sure if the Honey Nut Cheerios bee has nightmares, they look like this.
These bees don't want you to see! What dangerous object is in your kitchen that darkness might conceal? It's the perfect crime...
How did that many get into there and die from the heat without starting a fire, and it would seem much less than that would be required to block out the light. So was this light turned on for like a week without you noticing?
So, is this a fake or did someone recently seal in and spray these bees?
Need. Goliath. Beetle. Chaser. Now.
They'd been blocking the light for over a month. There were bees in the other cups, which I could see, but I had assumed this one had a dead bulb. I was lazy and just got around to changing the bulb last night.
As an aside, I hate the light fixtures. The use springs to keep them flush against the ceiling, but I stretched the springs so now the fixtures droop and one fell last night and sent glass splinters all over the floor.
Was you ever bit by a dead bee?
first glance I thought that was an overflowing bowl of Werther's candies.
mmm, light-bulb heated honey..
Amazons Attack indeed!
Colony collapse disorder-- solved! THAT is where all the missing bees are!
...a good source of dietary protein...
But are they kosher? That's what I want to know. Some insects are, others aren't.
Bees are strange creatures, to wit:
http://tr.im/ufMB
and
http://tr.im/ufMZ
You guys like swarms of things, right?
...the rest fell on the floor when I took out the glass cup.
Admit that it scared the bee-Jesus out of you.
Can't let a good bowl of dead bees go to waste! Poor some milk on it and call it a day!
got African where you live? Yet, anyway?
And I thought I was bad about routine home maintenance.
remindes me of this old "The State" skit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujIZdgrhuWA
The lightbulb in my office ceiling lamp burned out some time last year.
I have yet to replace it.
Largely because the step ladder is allllll the way downstairs and I never really think about it until the evening, when it's dark out and I'm up to my eyeballs in something or other on the computer. At which point I usually lean over and turn on the desk lamp, because thats faster than going downstairs and getting the ladder.
I'm just thanking my lucky stars that it's a ceiling fan and there is NO WAY there are bees in it.
582 bees, one cup...
I can't better what Nicholas Cage said about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIvHVIMAEks
Definitely a fire hazard. In addition to just being creepy.
Springs are an odd design choice.
Anybody remember a novel by Donald Kingsbury novel called COURTSHIP RITE? The human inhabitants ate bees (one of the "Eight Sacred Plants"). It's an image I'll never forget.
Somehow this is far more disturbing to me than your "what is this strange infected hole in my leg" photo from your time on a South Pacific island, Mark.
I got bees.
The good news is: I want bees.
Gentrification
-- Sherman Alexie
Let us remember the wasps
That hibernated in the walls
Of the house next door. Its walls
Bulged with twenty pounds of wasps
And nest, twenty pounds of black
Knots and buzzing fists. We slept
Unaware that the wasps slept
So near us. We slept in black
Comfort, wrapped in our cocoons,
While death’s familiars swarmed
Unto themselves, but could have swarmed
Unto us. Do not trust cocoons.
That’s the lesson of this poem.
Or this: Luck is beautiful.
So let us praise our beautiful
White neighbor. Let us write poems
For she who found that wasp nest
While remodeling the wreck.
But let us remember that wreck
Was, for five decades, the nest
For a black man and his father.
Both men were sick and neglected,
So they knew how to neglect.
But kind death stopped for the father
And cruelly left the son,
Whose siblings quickly sold the house
Because it was only a house.
For months, that drunk and displaced son
Appeared on our street like a ghost.
Distraught, he sat in his car and wept
Because nobody else had wept
Enough for his father, whose ghost
Took the form of ten thousand wasps.
That’s the lesson of this poem:
Grief is as dangerous and unpredictable
As a twenty-pound nest of wasps.
Or this: Houses are not haunted
By the dead. So let us pray
For the living. Let us pray
For the wasps and sons who haunt us.
all they wanted was to discover television and look what happened
2 words: Snack Time!
really? no one has said this yet???
IT'S COVERED IN BEES! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!
"My God -- it's full of bees..."
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
3000 bees 1 cup
fapfapfap
Nice Arrested Development reference, #18.
I submit that one reason the picture is so freaky is because... it looks like... something to eat. Like cereal. Hmmm.
Bee vac to the rescue!
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/02/how_to_build_a_bee_vacuum.html
when I was a kid we had a bee hive in the garage, not a problem most of the time but once a year there would be a big die off (I think of drones) resulting in a really foul odour.
you need to find and get rid of your hive or at least block the bees access to your roofspace.
'I like my women how I like my coffee--covered in bees!!'
Any of your neighbors get married lately?
This alternate ending to the Bee Movie didn't test too well huh?
Seriously. LMAO.
@53 That's exactly what I as going to write almost word for word.
Someone needs to post the You Tube link to that Eddie Izzard routine. I would, but stupid, stupid work blocks it. :-(
Finally, the fabled bee's graveyard has been discovered!
I have dead bees in my overhead fan above the stove top. I finally convinced my landlord to send out a real beekeeper to see if I have a hive. I don't, but he attached screening to keep them out. I already dumped the fan covering a few years ago. I am putting off doing it again. It will be a mess. I don't cook, so there's no hurry. But nothing like walking into the kitchen and bees flying around!!
"Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" #29
Didn't anyone respond to that above? Walter Brennan in "To Have and Have Not," with Bogey and Bacall.
So I'm kinda a raw foodie, sometimes. In May, I had two guests, a raw foodie chef and her sister. So the sister is going about how raw foodies don't use honey, cos it's an animal product. (which I knew)
So then I mentoined something about my bees in my overhead fan, and I had to spray it cos otherwise we'd all be ducking for cover in the kitchen. She was kinda horrified I'd kill bees. I said, "hey, I didn't invite them into my kitchen. You wanna be stung?" That shut her up!!
I'm an animal lover, and mostly vegan, but WTF, I don't wanna be stung or bit, by an alive or dead bee!!
@53 & 64 . . .
Eddie Izzard, "Covered in Bees"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRz_-0B1qw
Oh, and that's @ 60, too -- Don't want you to feel left out or anything! :-)
contact this guy:
http://beehuman.blogspot.com/
and he'll know what to do about your predicament
Yikes!
Thank you #66! That "bit by a dead bee" reference was going to drive me nuts!
Is this where the missing bee colonies have disappeared to?
if you have a hive removed, be sure they get all the comb. comb sans bees attracts rats and ants.
I officially would have shit my pants if I I had been changing a lightbulb and seen that.
It's very delicious.
_
I, for one, welcome our.....nevermind. I feel bad for the little guys.
When I first saw the foto I thought it was a picture of hundreds of little glass bulbs (fairy lights? bee lights) shaped like bees. It took me a minute.
Beautiful poem, Fatcat @ 50
#69: http://beehuman.blogspot.com/
Yep, Kirk Anderson is the one who trapped out the bees a few months ago. He is the leader of the Backwards Bee club, of which I'm a member.
#22 - Raining Honey in the house...
RAINING HONEY?
You realize, entire children's novels and many a lighter, pleasant acid trip have chosen for their subject exactly this situation...
WTF is happening in your house? That is truly bizarre.
Just curious, but did you use an Energy Saving Lightbulb, or an ordinary lightbulb in the lighting fixture?
They're really reaching with these sequels to Snakes on a Plane.
Careful they don't get in your eyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4MqTCIDKhU
Also, kudos to the Eddie Izzard and Arrested Development references.
The only other classic comedy bee reference I can think of is Black Books:
Manny: "I ATE ALL YOUR BEES!"
Bernard: "You fucker."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyBLazTMRKE
Mark: Bees perceive light in the ultraviolet spectrum. What kind of light bulb did you have in this fixture?
You live in filth.
I hate them bees.
i would buy these from you. no joke, i think they're fascinating and i'm an art student always looking for new materials to work with. would you be willing to sell them?
13Strong, what about Monty Python. After a long argument about cat licenses, and the revelation that the nutbar's pets are all named Eric:
Nutbar: I'd like to buy a bee license.
Bureaucrat: For your pet bee? Eric the Bee?
N: No, Eric the Half-Bee. He had an accident.
There's even a song:
"...I love this hive employee-ee,
Half asleep upon my knee.
Some freak, from a menagerie? NO!
Eric the half a bee."
The solution to all your bee problems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDSf3Kshq1M
We've had the same problem for several months. Dead bees kept appearing in the window sill in the kitchen and the sliding glass door in the living room. There were 60 of them one day! We had three different people come out (2 from Terminex and 1 Bee Company) - but NOBODY could find a hive. We've had no other signs of a hive and no major activity of bees coming/going around our eaves/fireplace. We finally did see one bee go in the fireplace and waited until it crawled out of the glass covering. The last guy installed a fine screen over the fireplace and warned we could not use it come winter. We haven't seen a single bee since then!! He thinks they were confused by a similar house with an infestation in our neighborhood. Said bees aren't all that smart but definitely creatures of habit.