Posted on 05/02/2024 12:52:24 AM PDT by billorites
The ceremonial first pitch is an honor usually bestowed upon a certain class of celebrity. But when the Arizona Diamondbacks were set to start their game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday, after a lengthy delay, they didn’t trot out a famous musician or a beloved retired player to lob the ball in the direction of home plate.
Instead, the man standing on the mound was dressed in the full ballooning arms and flapping headgear of a beekeeping suit. That’s because Matt Hilton, a Blue Sky Pest Control manager in Phoenix, was the only reason baseball could be played at Chase Field that night at all.
The trouble began shortly before the contest’s scheduled start time of 6:40 p.m., when a swarm of bees buzzed in a mass at the top edge of the protective netting behind home plate. It was an insect infestation straight out of the infamous playoff game in Cleveland in 2007, when a horde of Lake Erie midges attacked New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain.
Only this one had the potential to be much more painful.
About five minutes before the umpires were set to shout, “Play ball!,” Mike Rock, the Diamondbacks’ vice president of ballpark operations, received a phone call from Kat McDonald, the senior manager of event services. She informed him that the stadium had suddenly become an apiary.
When Rock asked how many bees had landed up there, McDonald responded, “Hundreds—no wait, thousands!” That’s when he knew he had a problem on his hands. The Diamondbacks stalled the game, surveyed their options and put in a call to Blue Sky, their corporate partner for pest control.
“I did make a call to a competitor, just to see, ‘Are you close by?’” Rock said.
But it was Hilton—who was watching...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Those critters are the bees knees!!
Now they’re 23-skidoo!!
Darn autocorrect
The City of Calgary just unveiled their new slogan, ‘Calgary: Blue Sky City’. The old slogan was, ‘Calgary: be part of the energy’.
It cost us $5.8 MILLIIN CDN, for this. What an absolute joke and waste of money for a slogan that means nothing. (Many now call Calgary ‘BS City, BTW!)
Perhaps Mr. Matt Hilton, of Blue Sky Pest Control, can pay a visit to ‘Blue Sky City’ Hall and eliminate a whole slew of pests!
They stabbed my heart in San Francisco should be their new slogan
BTW, Jason Statham's movie "The Beekeeper" is definitely worth the watch.
Nobody was in any danger. A bee swam looking for a new place to hive, with no honey to protect, won’t sting people.
See bee bearding contests.
Dirk Morgan did this for the Cincinnati Reds a couple years ago.
Nothing new.
They will sting if you are rough with them.
Ask me how I know.
I’m a beekeeper, and answer is ……
Yes they do still use Smoke, but not when dealing with a swarm. Smoke is used when opening up a hive. It causes the bees to settle down inside the hive and concentrate on filling their tummy’s with honey because they sense a fire may be coming and they would have to flee the area. When capturing a swarm we gently spray (mist) honey/water mixture on them. It works to calm them for several reasons.
Looks fun..
Look up bee beard gone wrong on duck duck go.
Not so fun.
Good thing those were bros and not...well, you know...not bros.
Not really. You know, reporters should be taught that not every noun requires an adjective, especially when you just have to make them up
The removal guy said in a later interview that most of the bees in Arizona are Africanized. The swarm he removed had “bedded down” for the night and were mostly docile at that point. He said a problem could occur if the net or the swarm were hit with a baseball or other object.
Un-bee-lievable
LOL, I was just looking at the preview the other night...looked kind of interesting.
Do you know Jason Statham’s politics? (I always view it at a positive sign if it is largely unknown, regardless of what they support, Left or Right.)
Just curious.
Some years ago, I had a shed, and one day while working around it, I noticed the large black bumblebee types landing on the concrete ramp, and walking under the large sliding door.
That usually isn’t a good sign, and sure enough, when I watched one land, it walked under a table with a bunch of stuff piled around it, I saw a large dome on the floor, about 2 feet by two feet, and the bumblebee walked right into it.
It looked kind of like a mouse nest.
Now, those large, mostly black bumblebees looked nasty with a visible stinger on them that looked to me like it stuck out a quarter inch from their abdomen, so I went inside, and had one of those helmets with the netting on it, put on a pair of woolen german army pants that had a plastic liner over a pair of sweatpants, put on a heavy jacket, used duct tape around my pant legs and jacket cuffs over heavy leather gloves, and had the jacket zipped all the way up with the netting tucked inside. It felt impenetrable.
So, I grabbed a large, thick, heavy duty garbage bag, a small rake, and walked up to the thing where I could hear a faint buzzing inside.
I poked it gently with the rake, and heard the buzzing volume increased dramatically. I stepped back and pondered it, wondering why I felt so damned nervous...as covered up as I was.
I screwed up my courage, opened the bag on the ground, held it open with my legs, and took the rake to scoop the whole nest inside.
I put the rake behind it and moved the whole thing about an inch, and it erupted with a really, REALLY loud, ANGRY buzzing...and the entire nest visibly VIBRATED!
I completely lost my nerve.
No doubt, I had a vision of those things, swarming me, each one about an inch wide with a quarter inch stinger, just looking for some area on my person they could penetrate with that stinger that, every time I looked at it, was taking on the aspect of a hypodermic needle!
LOL, I left it alone and called some guys who advertised themselves as “The Bee Guys”. They showed up in a beat up red pickup, and got out wearing white coveralls and ZZ-Top style beards...they looked to be thin, watery-eyed, crittery guys in their mid-sixties!
They went out back and came back about a minute later, no other protective gear, and had the nest in a large black garbage bag...I think we paid them $75 and they left us a jar of honey...:) When we asked what they did with the bees, one laconically said “We just kill em, they ain’t good for honey or nuthin’ anyway...”
Bees are females. There might be a few males in that swarm that will be expelled once the hive is established.
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