Raccoons and Bees

It has been a long day. I woke up about 7, which isn't too bad but when I went to the kitchen Ardmore asked me what happened to my flower pot on the deck. I didn't know what he was talking about. All I had on the deck was one covered flower pot because of a frost prediction. Well, a raccoon or some other animal must have decided to dig for something in the pot, dirt and flowers were all over the northeast corner of the deck. It was close to the winter bird feeder, and we had a raccoon feast off of the sunflowers last fall. The animal must have smelled the sunflowers and came to investigate. The mess took about an hour to clean up including the hosing of the deck. It was already in the fifties so I put the flower pots and hanging plants back out on the deck and took the pails off of the eight pots in front of the house.

The dirt had accumulated on the carpet by the sliding doors and with company coming on Monday, it seemed like a good time to vacuum and dust. I ended up going in to work at 11:30.

This evening, I started to mow the yard...again. Ardmore noticed that there were several hundred bees in the air by the back of the barn and when I was mowing on the east side of the shop I saw them swarming. They were in a mass about 2-3 feet around and Ardmore thought about 2-3 inches thick. After they settled down I took some photos.

Bee Swarm

My brother and wife will probably be here on Monday evening. Bob has a severe allergic reactions to bees so I hope the swarm has left. If not the bee keepers will come and take care of the bees.

I spent much of my time working on a PowerPoint program for new board members today. One of the board members will be in to critique it tomorrow.