Recycling Bees

How many of you recycle? Where we live in California it actually pays to recycle, if not for the environment it also gains us back a bit of the cash we have to pay for a CRV (California Redemption Value) fee when we purchase drinks, yes there is an extra fee added to anything it seems in glass or plastic bottles, or aluminum cans and this fee is recovered when you recycle.

When we lived in New Mexico we tried saving aluminum cans for a while and got all excited when the price went up to twenty five cents a pound and cashed in what seemed like a truckload, yes we had a whole storage building full of aluminum cans and I stomped, crunched, smashed, gave up and threw all I could get into plastic garbage bags and hauled them down to cash in on the millions we were going to make on this truckload of cans, about thirteen dollars later we decided that it was hardly worth it to save cans anymore, now since we moved to California the prices are way different, heck today I had a bag of crunched aluminum cans, a bag of plastic bottles, and a partial bag of glass bottles, fifty six dollars later we stand by our decision that it is well worth it to recycle each one here and not just the aluminum.

The environmental factor that attempted to get in our way the last couple days has been something so small but yet so scary, especially in large groups, the large swarm of bees that appeared since the weather warmed up following our couple weeks worth of cool weather and rain has been anything but amazing. Day before yesterday there were a couple bees on the apples we were storing on the patio table for the horses, we didn’t think much about it until later on in the day the apples appeared to be moving, finding a rotten apple in the bunch I decided this was the reason, yesterday morning Cindy left a coke can on the porch when she left for work and her Dad coming out onto the porch said it was completely covered with bees, he took the can and said when he dumped it more bees flew out than coke.

I went around the house to our recycle cans to find a swarm of bees all over the area, they were landing on the lid of the aluminum can storage container and crawling underneath the handle, OK now I am hoping this swarm was not taking up residence in our can like the swarm I told you about in Bring On The Bees. In my professional beekeeping experience I pulled out all the stops and got into bee moving mode, I hooked up the jet nozzle on the water hose and sprung into action, this really got the swarm stirred up and you will be glad to know I didn’t get myself stung nor did I get the bees to move along, so I hung up my Bee moving hat and conceded myself into waiting until way after dark to go out and relocate the cans and bottles into clean trash bags, after dumping all the water that had somehow gotten inside them, we tied up all the bags and placed them inside the garage, took the cans around back and washed them out really good leaving the bees with no place to swarm onto in the morning.

This morning the bees were swarming around looking for their sugar fix so to say, when the garage was opened they soon found the sealed bag and actually helped me transport it to the van, not that they were much help but they did add a spring into my step, Cindy seemed to be skipping herself as she helped to carry the bags to the van, we got everything loaded and made it out of the driveway with no stings and no extra passengers in the van, when we got to the recycle center guess what we saw, yes there were bees swarming all around and I was thinking to myself that they had followed us, I really felt sorry for the young man working there because of the large swollen lip he had to which he explained the cause as being a bee sting, the man in the office said all of his workers had suffered bee stings and he had people out looking for the hive.

We made it back home with our earnings to which we will use to take Cindy’s parents out for lunch, right now there are no bees swarming around our house and yes the recycle cans are still turned upside down around back of my shop, I’m really not in that big of a hurry to bring back the bees right now, although recycling is definitely worth it no matter the cost and we will continue to do so, in your area it would be worth it for you to check into doing the same, just for the next few days I am taking a break and storing the cans inside the house until our swarm of bees recycle themselves to another location.