Poison sumac, trees, and bees

hollowoutadime

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  • Feb 27, 2014
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    Not happy about this story but here it is.

    Live in Ohio and have to cut grass around a large dying cherry tree that is covered in poison ivy or sumac vines. On most of these I just cut the vines at the base and let the tree be. This one had holes at 3' and about 15' and was a literally hive of activity. Wasn't sure if they were hornets, yellow jackets, honey bees or whatever, but they didn't like my 72" Hustler whenever I went near it.

    Being March, I was naively hopeful that it was dormant, and I could drop it and eventually burn it without too much prednisone.

    The bees weren't having any of that.

    I was able to drop it yesterday then they started to swarm. I mixed up a bit of Termidor (Taurus SC) and a pint of water and hit the hollowed out base.

    Went back this am to cut it up. Not a soul survived. I was unhappy that it turned out to be a 8-10' column of honey bees with what turned out to be very sweet honey. (yeah, I tried some near the top of the hive). Wish they were something else.

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    Was.

    But ya bees and all the stangy things hate noise and vibration.

    Too bad a bee keeper wasn't handy. I have seen them remove hives from all kind of things and most survived.

    Personally I'm too scairt to fool with them.
     
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