The Bee Incident of 2007

WARNING!!
If you have a fear of bee's.... This post may give you nightmares :-)

If you look at the last post, there is a picture of me sandblasting the mast step in the focsul. You will notice that the only safety gear that I am wearing is a helmet and gloves... Let me tell you a tale...

It was a dark and scary night... No, wait that is another story...

It was a hot, sunny, humid day in southern Florida. I was getting ready to sandblast, so we had set up the world famous sandblasting suit for me to wear. The leaf blower was sitting up on deck running, to push fresh air through the silver dryer vent hose and into the suit. This was also the first day that Tamer got to try out our new neighbors' plasma cutter. Unfortunately every time that I would get into position (awkward in the first place), and start sandblasting, the breaker would trip. Finally I got frustrated, and took off the helmet, and pulled down the top of the suit to my waist, so that I could cool off a bit. Blayde was up on deck keeping an eye on me through the hatch as my safety man. At one point he had proclaimed frustration that there were so many bees flying around up on the deck. We told him to do his best to ignore them, and kept on working. At this point I had decided to do some rust chipping with a hammer and chisel, while I waited to have reliable power back.


Here is where the fun begins....

I notice something crawling on my chest, and when I go to flick it off, I see that it is the front half of a bee. Of course, then I notice another part of a bee moving around closer to my waist. Freaked out, I jump up and go to where I can stand up in front of the mast and look down at the floor.... Where I see about 15-20 various parts of bees bodies... On the floor where I had pulled the tyvek suit down. Some of them are alive, some half dead, but most just in half. Panicking now, I take the whole suit off, turn it inside out and see hundreds of pieces of bees all over!! What is soon discovered is that the bees are being sucked in through the leaf blower and coming right down the hose and into my suit. After I removed the suit, and we got the blower set up over a metal grating, there were still bees, in various states of death, crawling out of the hose. This went on for a few hours, and at that point you could not have paid me to put the suit back on. In fact, It has been about a month now, and I still have not worn it.

I am very thankful that I was not stung, and I wish each and every one of you 'Sweet Dreams'
;-)