Spiders And Snakes

 Tommy was checking the veggie garden, when he realized there were a load of bees swarming around the water plates (they look like tiny  . It's where the water company does the meter reading).  So I called the water company to tell them they need to get someone to clean it out, before their folks try to check our meter again... So here's the weird part... they tell me WE have to take care of it... My first thought was that I sure hope their employees aren't allergic to bees!
Lucky for them, they had the name of a bee keeper... I called, and he agreed to come out immediately (since he was going on vacation).

Turns out he also owns a store locally, where he sells the honey he collects from all the bees he retrieves!  So he does not charge a fee for collecting the bees.  Good thing, huh?
He was also willing to give us the honeycomb, but as it turns out, this was a fairly new hive, so there was no honey in it yet.  It was, however, HUGE!  He was scooping bees out by the handful to put into his "beebox". 
He left the box there for a couple of days, to be sure all the worker bees found their way in... he was quite certain he had scooped up the queen & gotten her into his box.  He was smoking them to calm them down, and just scooping up massive amounts of bees & dumping them in... it was kinda neat to watch!  Really glad to be rid of them though... I was nervous since they were so close to the garden & Rach likes to help out in there!

We also had another little visitor to our lanai, but we couldn't get anyone to get rid of THIS pest for free, so we had to do it ourselves... TWICE!  (guess he really likes the lounge chairs! LOL) 
Here is the one I was TERRIFIED of...

 As you can well imagine, I was NOT a happy camper when I found this guy hanging out so close to the pool!  We've never had one on the lanai before.. at least not that WE had ever seen!

Oh, and before anyone thinks I got suddenly brave, I was using the zoom BIG TIME on these shots... wouldn't catch me within 10 FEET of a snake... YUCK!!!!!!!