Walk softly and carry a big stick

Lately I've been working on a top secret art project that involves cedar wood. As you can see in the picture above, the cedar limb shown has two perfectly round holes in it. Sort of looks like a pig nose or something, doesn't it? Anyway, I noticed the holes in the limb a while back when we were clearing branches and those holes gave me an idea for an art project.

I trekked through the woods surrounding the little house and found a perfect cedar tree that had lots of bee holes in the wood.  As I cut through the branches I heard the wood bees inside buzzing furiously. A few flew out but most of them stayed put.

Fast forward 2 weeks. I had Manchild cut the limbs into more manageable lengths and when the sound of the saw stopped I heard those dang wood bees buzzing again. They were PISSED!!! I guess I would be mad too if my home was being dissected by a very loud, vibrating saw. I only saw one flying around but there had to be 5 or more in one branch.

Now that I'm a citified quasi-country girl, I can better handle bugs and critters than in previous years but I still get the willies when things start moving quickly or buzzing. And my branches with those bees were buzzing like hell. I decided to put the limb pieces in a bag and seal it up because the last thing I needed was to be cruising the interstate at 80 mph and discover a bee flying around in my car. There would be a massive crash for sure. If I saw a bee flying around in my car, I'd likely to try to climb outside of it and drive with my foot just to get away from it!!

 Luckily the bag held the bees and I made it home without incident. A day or two later I was telling my co-workers about the cool art project I was working on and I tried to describe the sound that the bees were making but I was met with blank stares so I decided to bring a piece of the wood to work so they could hear what I was talking about. I'm smart enough to know that there was a chance that the bee would decide to make it's escape and doing so in an office populated with 90% women would be a calamity so I fashioned a cap of sorts to seal the hole.

I laugh just thinking about how awful the scene would be if a big ol' fat, mean looking (but harmless) wood bee came out of my branch and started flying around the office. There'd probably be a bit of mass hysteria. And I'd probably be visited by the nice protective services officers again for having another critter in the office (I once caught a bat and had it in a box at my desk and they took it away from me. I also found a fox in the bushes outside of the building but I didn't try to catch it.). I wonder if anyone has been written up at this company for critter violations???

Anyway, I think that my bee branch was a hit and luckily the cap stayed firmly in place. Each time I banged on the branch the bee would loudly complain (geez, I wonder why) and everyone finally understood what I was trying to explain. Now all I have to do is complete my art project without harming any of the bees. Maybe I can use a pipe cleaner or something to gently dislodge them from their homes. I'm hoping that a few of them will take up residence in a tree at my house in the city. They're wonderful pollinators so maybe I'll wake up one morning and have a fantastic back yard garden overrun with flowers. I don't have any flowers now so those bees are going to have to get busy but I have faith in them. Hopefully they won't hold a grudge over me repeatedly banging on their branch just to hear them buzz. At least they couldn't see me so they don't know that I was the one disturbing them. Bzzz bzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz