Menaced

What kind of world are we living in where a man is not free to mow his own back yard without being menaced, harassed, and threatened?

Yes. The bees are back.

I stopped at the house today after a long drive from work. I was exhausted, and wanted to simply pass out on the bed. I did that for a while, but eventually roused myself. I changed into my lawnmowing gear, pulled out my reel mower from under my digging board on my back porch, and got to work.

I started with the brick walkway between the house and the grapevine. In the years since my grandmother lived in the house this has been allowed to get overgrown. The bricks saw the light of day for the first time in over a decade when I cut down the grass two years ago. Then I moved to the north side of the house, where I have the TV antenna with the snapped-off mast, and then around to the front. Then along the south side - which, like the north, is just a strip of grass barely three feet wide between the house and the slate sidewalk which runs around it. Then back to the back yard, to make quick work of the grass around the grapevines. Then on to the money part of the lawn, the large rectangle that constitutes half of the property. A quick jog along the southern edge, turn around, jog back along the same strip, and -

DUCK! Here come the bees!

The bees are living in my garage, shed, whatever you want to call it. They have staked out a territory: the garage and everywhere within five to ten feet of it. Stay outside of this zone and they will merely observe you, staying at an altitude of about ten feet but always following your movements. Come closer and they will actively menace you, zooming overhead, or dropping to eye level and bobbing up and down, or hovering behind you and just above your head. Come closer still and they will threaten you, diving at you or - in the most impressive threat display I have seen so far - drop to eye level and slowly approach you with their stingers curled around under their bodies, pointing directly at you, saying in no uncertain terms I am coming for you, do you want some of this?

(This was when I was finishing off the lawn around the garage, trying to get as close to the garage as I could without being attacked. Inexplicably, the bee became distracted during its approach and flew around the side of the garage, allowing me to make my last few passes and get the hell out of there.)

I've decided to live with the bees, partly because I don't believe in killing unnecessarily, partly because I recognize the valuable role that bees play as pollinators, especially now that honeybees have pretty much vanished from the scene locally, but mostly because exterminators cost money, money I just don't have right now.

I don't know what sort of bees they are. I assumed they were bumblebees, because they have the right coloration and are about the size of my thumb. Mark Cour from Wilkes-Barre Online thinks they're Carpenter Bees, which would be very bad news for my garage, although they may have been living there for many years before I bought the house. As Mark is the expert in this matter, I will defer to his judgement. Just as long as they don't sting me, I'm not too particular as to species.

Maybe they'll be happier once I set out the dozens of sunflowers I've got in seed starters right now. Or maybe they'll just decide that their territory has been expanded to include my entire yard!