Bees

Back when I was in the “spend hours and hours at the library” phase of my life, I found some books on bees. African killer bees.

Every time I see bees here, I see the pictures in that book of people covered head to toe in vicious, senseless African killer bee attacks. While I realize that not all bees here are killer bees, I can’t help it.

Last week, there was a group of us doing research in the conference room. Renee and Whitney were in another building doing water activity. Renee gave me a call, as they needed more whirl-pak bags and they were in the conference room. She was going to come over to pick them up.

We heard a buzzing sound and the buzzing sound got louder and louder. Nicolle looked up and said, “There are so many bees out there.” And I think it was John who rapidly got up and shut the door. There was a swarm of bees inside the office building, right outside our conference room.

It was at that moment that Renee called me again and said something to the effect of “I’m not going inside that building. There are tons of bees in there.”

We didn’t want to open the door anyways, so we told her we’d pass her the whirl-pak bags through the window.

Everything seemed fine and dandy, and then there was a bee in the room. 

Then there were two bees in the room, then three, then four, and all of a sudden there were five.

Bees don’t normally make me freak out, but at this point, all I knew was that there was a swarm of bees outside our door, and somehow, they were getting in. All I could hear was the angry buzzing outside the door and all I could see, other than the five bees erratically flying around and buzzing and slamming themselves into windows, were the pictures in that book of African killer bees.

I couldn’t make myself ignore them and get back to work. All I could do was keep my eyes on the bees at all times.

Then John saved the day and somehow got all of the bees outside through the window.

A couple more bees came in, but John again somehow got them all outside through the window.

Eventually the buzzing faded, we peered outside through a crack in the door, and realized that the swarm had left.

Sweet, sweet relief.