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The Bee Man
by Betsy Franz

Before we began building on our property, we would make frequent trips to just visit and enjoy the ambiance. Since the lot was thick with palmettos, we had to use lops and machetes to create paths through to the back of the property. On several of these occasions, one or the other of us ended up with a sting from a yellow jacket. On further observation we noticed a LARGE quantity of yellow jackets going into and out of a hole in the ground... presumably an underground hive.

We try to avoid the use of poisons and chemicals as much as possible, but knew that this hive was so large that it posed a danger to anyone that visited the property. I called the local County Extension service to try to find the name of someone who might come to our property and help us get rid of these insects, and they were able to give us several phone numbers. I ended up getting in contact with A.J. Deets, a 22 year old graduate student who was doing his masters thesis on yellow jackets. He said he would be willing to drive down from Gainesville, an approximate 3 hour drive, to "vacuum" up our yellow jackets. He used them to study but was also able to sell them to a company that extracts their venom.

On Saturday, June 12th, 1999, A.J. showed up at our house and we took him to the lot. We had borrowed a generator for him to plug in his leaf blower, the tool he uses to vacuum up the wasps. At the lot, he put on long pants and a sweatshirt, and then topped it with a full bee suit. He put on gloves and boots and a hood that covered his head with a screen over his face, and put duct tape around all the openings. Then he turned on the leaf blower (on vacuum) and stuck the end of it as close to the mouth of the hole as he could. He had a small (maybe ten inch) mesh bag inside the mouth of the blower to collect the yellow jackets. His process was to leave the blower there until the bag filled up, and then empty the yellow jackets into large ziploc freezer bags and put them on dry ice. He also intended to dig up the hive and take it back to Gainesville with him to study.

I watched the beginning of this procedure from about 15 feet away. When he first started the blower, a really sweet, overpowering smell filled the air. Later, he told me that is a pheromone the yellow jackets put out that means attack! And although they did attack him pretty vigorously, he was well-protected by the suit.

For almost four hours he kept that up. For the most part, he just sat in a lawn chair about 15 feet away and watched and emptied the bag from time to time as perspiration just poured off his body. Eventually he dug up the hive, which turned out to be too large for him to fit in a garbage bag to take back, so he just turned it over and reburied it.

There were still yellow jackets buzzing around when he quit, but he was tired and hot and he had about as many yellow jackets as his cooler could hold.

We offered to let him come back to our house and have a sandwich and take a shower and cool off and we talked to him for so long that we eventually let him spend the night so he wouldn't have to drive back to Gainesville late at night. It was very interesting hearing about how he had to take the yellow jackets home, pour them out on a table and separate the males and queens from the workers. He was majoring in zoology and it was fun picking his brain about different bugs and animals and the different research projects he had participated in.

He called us the evening that he finished processing and weighing the yellow jackets. He told us that "our" hive had produced more than any other hive he had visited: 9 pounds and 12 ounces. He had told us earlier that there are approximately 6500 yellow jackets per pound!!

We are very thankful that, with the help of A.J., what could have been a very dangerous adventure just turned out to be an unusual and exciting one.