The casual reader of this page doesn't know of my relationship with bees.
I was first stung when some neighbors of my grandmother in Crestwood decided to aggravate a hornet's nest with water. I had the unfortunate experience of having one of them sting me right above my eye despite being pretty far from the nest. My face swelled up, and there was much discussion among the elders indicating that I was allergic to bees.
Several years later I found that to be not true when I was stung a few times while riding a motorcycle or walking out in the woods. I would kill the bee, calmly remove the stinger and go about my day with noting more then a somewhat itchy welt to annoy me.
The bees decided to retaliate by changing attics—they commenced assaulting me by flying up my pants. First they attacked as I was on the way to a morning class and flew up a nice pair of cuffed white pants and stung me on my thigh. It was a fierce sting in an uncomfortable place--but much more tolerable then the wasp who flew up my pants leg and stung me me multiple times as I excused myself to go to an appropriate place in which one could remove their pants.
So I am no friend to insects that fly and sting. Recently a nest of yellow jackets moved into a composting bin located on the side of my garage. I saw them develop but ignored them because I didn't think that they would become a problem. Despite my attitude they quickly became a problem when I was stung twice within a week or so. It was time for them to go.
Much to my surprise, an internet search on ridding one of yellow jacket nests had two recommendations: If it's late summer, fall, wait until it gets cold, and that the single best way to get rid of a nest was a vacuum cleaner.
So I pulled out my trusty shop vac. After a false start I finally got the tube in the best location possible, and turned on the vacuum. Much to my delight and amazement, the machine started sucking them down. It was quite satisfying to scratch my still irritated sting on my leg as I watched bee after bee land and then get sucked up. I left the vacuum on for most of the day. I haven't seen a bee since yesterday afternoon.
It's pretty cool that this simple piece of household equipment can be used for such a purpose. I first purchased the small shop vac shortly after my separation—it was one of the first household appliance I purchased, along with a microwave. I quickly found that it was exceptional at ridding my small coachouse apartment of spiders and their associated webs. Sucking up spiders, however, was not nearly as satisfying as watching those yellow jackets get sucked up one by one.
Of course I now have a vacuum cleaner full of bees.
