To bee or not to bee

Our hummingbird feeder has been taken over by bees. At first there were just a few, but very quickly the number increased. They would go down into the holes for the hummingbirds to stick their beaks in. Then inside, many of them got in the liquid and would float up inside. They were also all around the outside. A couple of the hummingbirds would dart into one of the holes if it was empty, but the big yellow birds when they tried to land, would find the bees swarming around them; they would have to fly off without getting anything. On Thursday by the late afternoon, there were dozens of dead and dying bees inside the feeder as well as large numbers on the outside. We didn’t dare to take it down until night when the bees on the outside had gone. This morning, I emptied out all the dead bees. These bees didn’t seem that agressive in attacking, but many of the bees down here are ‘Africanized’ and can be aggressive, attacking with little provocation, sometimes simply sounds. I don’t know what we will do. Barb found an ad for the “humzinger” hummingbird feeder which claimed that it could keep out bees. Even though we did not have the feeder out today, the bees were still buzzing around. In fact, this evening when we were planning to eat out in the courtyard, 3 bees got into my wine and were rapidly in the process of drowning! I don’t know why because the wine was 13.5% alcohol so there couldn’t be too much sugar in it. We gave up and came inside for dinner.

Barb bought almost a dozen plants on Wednesday along with some compost (again surprisingly inexpensive). Most of these are climbing, flowering vines for along one wall and in front of the 3 large trees in front. Rosendo was digging holes today and Barb planted about 7 or 8. There are a few more to do over the weekend. After about 10 days or so, we finally got a good rain last night and this morning, although bright sunshine by this afternoon. During a break, we were talking to Rosendo. It seems that he spent some time in California as a gardener in the 1980s. He was in Los Angeles and Sacramento. His son-in-law has excellent English so he may have been raised in the US.

We are getting ready for the arrival of Jeff, Tarra and Aiden on Sunday night. They chose to fly with American Airlines because there would be only one stop in Atlanta before coming on to Guadalajara. However, there is a very long delay of about 6 hours in Atlanta. I expect that they will be very tired when they get here. They didn’t have any cribs at LCS when we when for rentals, but they did have a raised, padded playpen that we hope will work as a bed for Aiden. It will be very exciting to have them here.