I have special interest in three sciences: Ornithology, because my wife says I am ornery. Ichthyology, because the girls in elementary school constantly said I was icky, and Entomology for my appreciation of honeybees. Not that we have not had our differences; the last time I was stung, my arm pits swelled up like there were golf balls under the skin. Now when I travel, I must bring my Epipen™ to prevent my tongue from swelling up and choking me. Yet, I find the little fellows interesting. They leave the hive in the early morning and work all day gathering honey only to give it up to the Queen and the 500 kids. (I won’t try to draw any parallels here.)
When Cheryl and I were first married, we lived in an old two story building along the train tracks in Ferndale. It was built in 1890, had old wiring, poor plumbing, and no heat or insulation. The bottom floor had many businesses through the years. The second floor had a large dance hall. Behind that was a large room we made into our home. To our surprise, a hidden staircase led up into the attic which had six small rooms. Either it was a flop house or Ferndale’s train stop house of prostitution. The dance hall, Cheryl made into an aerobic studio and on the main floor she had sunbeds and a hair salon.
The old balloon framing on the outside of the building made the walls hollow and a straight shot from the ground to the attic. Sometime in its 134 year history, a hive of bees moved into the walls to stay. In the spring through fall, they mostly minded their own business and stayed outside. But in the winter, when the northeaster was blowing freezing wind on the east side of the building, the bees liked to come inside to stay warm.
One afternoon on a cold northeaster day, Cheryl was at the desk checking women into the sunbeds. At 3:00 pm I went down to relieve her so she could teach aerobics in the dance hall upstairs. I sat behind the desk reading my newspaper.
Bees and other flying bugs must orientate themselves in flight realizing that the bright sky or ceiling lights mean “up” and the darker surface is “down”. This is why I speculate they don’t fly upside down often.
In sunbed room #3, a woman had undressed and was lying in the warmth of the sunlamps. Meanwhile a honey bee emerged from the wall through a crack, his mandible was chattering. Flying around the room over the top of the open ceiling sunrooms, it spotted the bright warm light emanating from the side of the sunbed and flew in for a closer look. Once inside the bed an interesting phenomenon occurred; since there are bright UV lights on the top and bottom of the bed, the bee didn’t know which end was up so it flipped upside-down and tried flying inverted. All that happened was that it lay on its back, wings beating at full rpm, and spun like a top. It spun and spun right under the small of the back of the woman who was greatly enjoying her time away from her children.
What I heard next amounted to a swear word followed by the sound of a sun bed exploding open. Next the letters B, B, B, in rapid fire were shouted with each B getting generally higher in pitch.
Better Business Bureau? I thought.
Apparently no one had mentioned to this poor woman that Cheryl was not working the desk at the moment because in what can only be described as a very animated form of streaking, the woman, still very naked, burst from the sunbed room and ran a few laps around my desk, her hands flailing at the bee stuck in the middle of her back.
Finally, fully embarrassed, she stopped long enough in front of me to scream, “There’s a bee on my back!”
Remembering my Boy Scout Motto, “Be Prepared”, I quickly rolled my newspaper and slapped her on the back, possibly too hard in all the excitement, but permanently disabling the bee.
Cheryl came down from her class to see what all the chaos was about and kindly removed the stinger from the woman’s back.
Alas, even after being offered six free tans, the woman never returned.
Attending the sunbeds was never again as exciting as that day. But I can remember sitting behind the desk with my newspaper, staring at a fruit jar of the buzzing creatures and thinking to myself a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To bee or not to bee, that is the question.”
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2 replies on “When Bees Fly Upside Down”
Marty, I look forward to your Saturday morning stories like I used to look forward to Saturday morning cartoons. That was way back in the day when Saturday morning was the only time cartoons were televised. We also have a couple of things in common – I played trombone in school and I too carry an epypen. Dick
I have never seen that plaque before about the old dance hall. So cool. Our family certain could belong in the order of Odd Fellows, or at least a fellowship of oddballs!