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Poison sumac, trees, and bees

hollowoutadime

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Feb 27, 2014
1,912
2,666
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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