Angry bees: A new game in the garden

 Sting me once, shame on me. Sting me twice and it’s all-out war.

As if deer, voles and barrages of birds weren’t enough to contend with during the gardening season, now we’ve got a hive of angry bees holed up in the raspberry patch. I found this out the hard way when I was picking berries the other day and apparently blocked the entrance to what looks like an underground bunker.

I noticed a very agitated bee too late. Before I knew it, he’d stung me and called out his buddies for reinforcement. I ran for my life.

I can’t get close enough to examine their apparent hive, but it looks like bees are zooming in and out of a hole at the base of the raised bed. I’m used to honeybees floating around our flowering fruit trees in the spring. They’re always so harmless, but these bees in their raspberry bush fortress are something else.

There have been other reports of angry bees in the Flathead this summer. A swarm was spotted in downtown Whitefish recently, and it wasn’t long ago I took a call from an eastside Kalispell resident who was trying to get rid of his hostile bees. He had knocked down the hive and burned it. The bees then became extremely aggressive, he said. They were really ticked off.

So I called the state entomologist, who said if your home were destroyed you’d be grumpy, too.

The eastside resident who alerted me was sure he had “killer” bees, otherwise known as Africanized honey bees. But the state expert said he’d be “very surprised” if there were any pure strains of killer bees in Montana. They don’t over-winter well in this climate, he added. OK, I thought, that’s good; no killer bees here.

This week I read about a massive bee attack that killed seven animals — two miniature horses and five chickens — and injured a couple in Texas. That article said the killer bee population is expanding due to warm weather. I decided to do a little further research and what I learned was terrifying.

These angry bees will viciously attack people or animals that unintentionally stray into their territory and they’ll follow you for up to a quarter-mile. However, they don’t have to be disturbed to be provoked; even simple noises or vibrations have been known to cause an attack. They can swarm even if they sense rain.

The bees that have taken up residency in my berry patch probably aren’t the real-deal killer bees, but they’re nasty nonetheless.

It’s been a bad summer for wasps or hornets or yellowjackets (or whatever the heck they are), too, and I was stung by one of those recently for the first time in years. They’re also relentless. I knock down their little nests above the front door of our house and they’re back the next day rebuilding.

My husband has unleashed cans of spray on those, but to no avail.

I’m open to any tips or home remedies to keep these flying insects out of the way. It could be a long, unproductive garden season if I can’t figure out a way to work around these winged warriors. It’s war all right, and I intend to win.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.