As a birthday gift I received a new Duralast battery for my old red truck. 650 CCA yeah!!
However the old battery was so corroded that it was a ton of work to get the thing running again. But with the help of my dad and my good neighbor Joe and about 6 hours of sweat the job is done. You're probably thinking: "How can it take 6 hours to change a battery." Well the battery leads were so corroded that it was impossible to get them off of the battery. Well the positive one anyway. But after taking the wheel off and jacking the thing up to the moon and getting really dirty it final had power.
Although it had power it would not start. It was turning over and seemed to be getting spark. So I say to Joe, "That gas in there is pretty old, how about I put in some fresh and see if that helps." So I went to the garage, got the can, opened the little door to the gas cap, and then - I wet myself... (see picture below right)
Over the previous weeks I had seen a few bees hanging around my truck, I assumed that they were foraging around in the brush pile in the back of my truck. I couldn't have been more wrong. So after gathering my composure and snapping the picture above, Joe and I set out to destroy the bees hopefully without getting stung. I don't know if you can see, but these are really big bees. Like twice the size of a honey bee. So the question then becomes, "How can we kill and entire hive of bees right now and not get stung even once?"
I had some insect killer that said "kills on contact", as did my neighbor Joe. His comment on that stuff was something to the effect of; "If we use that we'll get massacred, shoot I think you could probably drink that stuff." While I would never drink it and definitely warn all readers of this blog not to drink it, I agreed with the sentiment whole heartedly.
The answer; Brake Cleaner. (see picture above left)
Apparently, a mixture of Heptane, Xylene, Methyl Alcohol, and Ethylbenzene is really really bad news for bees. I backed my minivan up and turned the headlights on so we could see. (It was about 9:00 at night when we discovered the bees) He stood as close as he dared and emptied the can on the hive. After that the hive was quiet. "No noise suggests, No bees". No bees, Not one; they all dropped from the hive in a great big heap. One or two of what I would guess were the "tough guys" made it about 4 inches up the spray but then dropped as dead as the rest. When the can ran out we both stood there watching the mess waiting for more to come out of the depths or for survivors to resurrect from the pile. It didn't happen. I then finished off the rest of their bee infrastructure with a water hose and thoroughly cleaned the gas tank opening.
What we say on the ground was a natural amazement. Bees in every conceivable stage. Larva, Pupa, Pupa that were almost real bees. It was like watching the discovery channel. Except for the humidity, poor lighting, and smell of brake cleaner.
The next day my truck started just fine. Last Saturday I got rid of all the brush that had collected in it, but you know what? That didn't stop the bees. A contingent of about 20 bees must have been hiding out somewhere in some sort of Bee nuclear bunker or something because I have been fighting those bees consistently since I got rid of the hive. I guess the bee constitution insures that the vice-president bee be kept at an undisclosed safe location away from the hive in case shade tree mechanics decide to stage a complete overthrow of their government with EthleBezenizitonicmanfrengenson, or whatever that stuff was.
If I park the truck in a slightly different spot the (BIA) doesn't seem to be able to find the entrance to the old hive. I guess their (BPS) systems only work with exact locations and they can't exactly visually recognized that it is the same truck just backed in instead of heading straight in. Nevertheless I was pretty impressed that they came back to rebuild.
