Yesterday morning I woke up early and turned on the light it was still so dark. I was looking forward to the morning's work, and then getting ready for a special luncheon date with Keryn and 80 other lovely ladies of the town.This event is eagerly looked forward to every year and tickets are snapped up months ahead of time. I could hardly wait.

Something buzzed past my head and I assumed it was a blowfly, the herald of Spring in country Australia. But no, it was a BEE, and I quickly realised the chimney was full of them, trying to get out to the light. Fortuneately there is a mesh screen in the fireplace, or the room would have literally been swarming with them.

Now while I immensely admire the bee in itself and am fascinated by their society, thirty of them flying around my room is the stuff of nightmares!So I flipped the light off, rushed out and slammed the door while I worked out a battle plan.(The first thing to do was ring Keryn and shout "Help!" into the phone.....)

She was much calmer than I, having handled bees in her days at agricultural college and was less than supportive of my insistence on spraying the lot of them. But we couldn't block off the screen properly without dealing with the ones loose in the room, so they were dispatched with flyspray. The sound of them buzzing was terrifying and I decided to clear them out of the way so they didn't dive bomb us or crawl up our legs. Quickest way?- the vacuum! This worked well until Keryn was doing the floor near my open travel bag and there was a loud rattle of something disappearing up the tube.
Whatever it was remained firmly stuck in the bend of the tube and so we had to dismantle the various bits, pulling the hose out and finally managing to dislodge this little bottle of cuticle oil, of all things!
It was so firmly jammed I thought it would never come loose!!All the while the buzzing in the chimney grew louder and angrier and Bees were crawling under the screen ...... Meltdown was quickly approaching.

Eventually all stray bees were sucked up, and we set to work stuffing the gaps around the screen with scraps of batting- betcha didin't think of that use for it, did you? It's not pretty, but while the hive is in the chimney every fireplace here is going to look like this.
Next stage of the hurriedly constructed Plan was to spray up the chimney to encourage them to find a new home. I heard the swarm outside yesterday, so I knew they hadn't been there long. Easy for them to upsticks and move on now before they got settled. But the squirts up the chimney(through the screen so that it looked like this)

produced a deep reverberating growl that positively vibrated the brickwork and made us stare at each other in apprehension. We had Angered them. A lot. Time to retire and have a cup of coffee and think about this.


It occurred to both of us as we sipped our coffee in the sunroom that none of this had been on the schedule today. My bedroom was wrecked, the vacuum was stuffed full of bees, there was unsightly batting festooning the fireplaces and flyspray dripping down the screens.As we looked at the garden we saw that it was now full of angry, Angry bees dashing all over the place. Hmmm. What had happened to that enjoyable day I'd envisaged?

I decided we'd contained the problem for now and it was time to get back on track. There was a lady at the luncheon whose husband kept bees and she might know what to do.

The luncheon (in aid of the local Hospital Guild) was a delight. They put on an "Entertainment" and my face hurt from laughing at the end of it. After the chaos of the morning it was just what I needed.

And here is a little wall-hanging that a dear friend gave us for our birthdays. After a recent trip to town where we scored quite a few really good bargains I think that both of us looked like that little mouse, staggering back to the car.
Do you think our friend is trying to tell us something?