Don't plan beds in bee nests.

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mikekilhoffer Chatham, IL(Zone 5b) Jun 14, 2006

I came home from the UMW Roundup with a bunch of plants.
I mowed the lawn and then deceided the best location for a flower bed was the SE edge of my house.
As I was weed-eating the corner where the riding mower was rendered useless I had a bug fly right at my face..... I have good reflexes so
I swatted it down to the ground. I saw that it was a bumblebee. I looked for a second as it tried to get it's bearing, and all of the sudden another
bumblebee flew at my face from the same place I had been weedwhacking, luckily it too was swatted to the ground. Then the ground erupted in a wave of black flying fuzzys coming straight toward me... so gas-powered whacker in hand, I dropped everything and ran! I don't mind a sting but against a hive I will run away and live to fight another day. Well the gas weedwhacker kept on spinning as I ran.... after I came back out, the weedwhacker had carved a nice groove in the ground, and the bees were still swarming, but I had to get the thing turned off before it spun it's way into destroying a large portion of yard, so I took a jug of tiki-torch fuel and lit it on fire like a molotov cocktail and hurled it near the bees...... it made a huge black smoke plume and the bees seemed unhappy, I have heard that bees go dormant with smoke, and what better smoke than tiki-fuel. I am not sure that it made any difference, but I ran in and grabbed the weedwhacker and turned it off while running from the area. After the fuel burned out.. (A depressingly small amount of time) I went back to see what was left..... still a bunch of grass, and still an active traffic pattern of bumbles.
I set my alarm for 4am, and got up to enact revenge on the hive. I doused the area I thought the bees were in...(the three foot, unmowed grass made things difficult) with 5 gallons of gas. I am "certain" that I hit the hive's hole, as it is only a 2x2 sq. ft. area. and I went downstairs to check my email. The basement smelled strongly of gas for three hours.
Today the smell of gas is gone from the basement, the grass is way beyond dead where I doused it, and the bees are even more happy to fly unimpeded through the remnants of dead grass from their hole in the ground.
First war lost, next war I spray ID Red Carburetor cleaner down the hole. It seems to make them unable to fly.
If that fails it's badmitin raquets and a shovel until I find the queen. I have dug Bumble nests before and found the green/black workers and the queen, but never along the foundation of my home.

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