Having a bee in your bonnet is not nearly as quaint as it sounds.

I’ve been experiencing higher-than-normal bee volume lately, and I don’t know that I like it. Bees don’t really bother me – I know Ed hates them and Shan is just shy of terrified of them, but for all my anti-crawly-thing policies, I am on very good terms with bees.

That being said, I don’t want them all up in my business.

A couple weeks ago, a bug hit me while I was riding. It’s a little startling, but no big deal – we get hit by bugs all the time. I saw it just before it hit me, and had enough time to note that it was a bee before it went splat.

Unfortunately for me (but luckily for the bee), my helmet visor was up. Instead of going squish all over my helmet, the bee flew right in my face. This made me jump a little, but I assumed the bee bounced off my cheek and landed somewhere on the ground. I rode on, this time with my visor down.

And then I heard the buzzing.

I ignored it at first, because the wind makes interesting noises through my helmet. I figured someone was using a chainsaw off in the woods, and didn’t think much of it.

Then I heard the buzzing again, this time accompanied by tickling.

The bee had not, in fact, bounced off anything but rather flew directly into my helmet and into my hair. He was groggily crawling around the inside of my helmet, attempting to fly around my ear. I freaked out – I might be okay with bees to the point of almost LIKING them, but having a bewildered bee think your ear canal might lead to the outside world is NOT a comforting thought – and pulled off the side of the road, yanking my helmet off in a panic. I shook it out, ran my fingers through my hair a dozen times, and removed all the padding to make sure the bee was gone. A bee! In my helmet! This is no good at all!

There were a lot of bees on our scooters this past weekend too. At one point there were four of them hovering around Josh’s bike, prompting me to ask if he had picked up a nest somewhere in Alaska. A bee or two chased Shan around, and we left the area to enjoy the rest of our bee-free Sunday.

Monday morning: Lemon was going insane and trying to climb a living room wall. I looked up, and saw the object of his frenzy – there was a bee in the house, flying around and looking confused. I did some Bee Whispering, and tried to reason with it: it should leave through that tiny open window, because there are no flowers in here and Lemon will probably eat you. The bee was in no mood to negotiate though, and it took Ed a good 15 minutes and an entire place setting to get the bee safely outside.

I am being stalked by bees.

This morning I discovered the reason for the scooter bees. There is, in fact, a very large nest in the blackberry bushes about 3 feet from where we park. This is a warning to the North Shore crew – be careful when parking across the street; there’s an army of bees waiting for you.

What do you do about bees? They’re not on anyone’s property, and the nest is large and exposed and scary looking. The blackberries are ripening, so a lot of people poke around in those bushes – it would probably be very bad for someone to stumble into the nest and anger a whole bunch of stinging meanies. Can you call the city about this? I don’t want to bug bomb it – killing them seems unnecessary and would poison all the berries – but the damn thing is at crotch level. The last thing I need is an angry horde coming for my crotch. How do I deal with bees?!

bzzzzz