For the past two weeks, there has been a solitary bumblebee on my back deck. He hovers approximately three feet from the surface of the deck, and unless I am out there, covers a left to right distance of three feet. He is always facing the house. When I am on the deck, he directly in front of me and follows me about. If you make sudden movements, he dashes off, but comes back almost immediately. He also guards the deck from other bumblebees, chasing them off. There are no flowers on the deck, just pots of dirt so far. I do not regularly wear perfume.
I would just like to know, what in the hell is this bumblebee doing???
Almost sounds like you’ve got a nest of them somewhere and are actually seeing more than one bumble. I mean, I sure can’t tell one bumble from another.
But why your deck? Beats me. Maybe you’ve got something there that’s really psychadelic in his UV eyesight.
At least bumbles aren’t aggresive, as you’ve found out.
I do NOT like the bumblebee. Maybe there’s an opening in the siding or something and they’re going in there to have sex and ruin your life. I’d look into it. How can you enjoy your deck when the stalker is there???
I do believe he has a nefarious purpose. I just cannot determine what it is. He is a peeping bee. Maybe he sees his reflection is the glass and thinks that I am a bumble as well, that I somehow transform when I come outside. That’s it! He is a sex crazed, peeping bumble intent on having his way with me, thus ruining my life!
Those bee/hornet killing sprays are pretty impressive killers. You shoot some of that at a bee and it’ll drop dead before you let your finger off the spray button.
Anyway, I have to agree with Mariachi kitty, you’ve probably got a nest of them close by and you’re actually seeing many different ones. Spray one dead and see if he comes back to life" the next day. If he does, call an exterminator.
If you do have a nest, try calling a bee keeper. He or she can get the queen and safely transport to whole bunch 'o peeping bees to a nice forrest somewhere.
It’d be a shame to kill all those bumbles. They’re not that common anymore. I don’t know if the bee mites are doing a number on them like they are on Honey Bees, but bumbles seem to be seen less often now a days. (No cite - purely personal & familial anecdotal evidence.) Unless, of course, you’re Lyllyan and have a tribe of peeping bees in your backyard.
I once had the nifty experience of seeing a hive migration. A queen honey bee decided she liked one of the maple trees in the front yard. We did not like hundreds of bees 20 feet from the front door. We called a local bee keeper. He came and took the hive away, installed them into his set up, and made them productive bee members of society. It was really neat seeing him work.
FWIW, I have a phobia about insects that sting, so I can imagine how unsettling a bee stalker would be.
I get them too, they fly in the front door on the way to their nest in the back somewhere, fly through room to room, then hit the back window & fall into my bed. At night I get in bed, feel something fuzzy &, well, you can imagine the rest.
I once asked the cops to do something about the nest somewhere in the neighborhood & they said ‘we don’t do bees’.
You might actually have a carpenter bee. They look like bumble bees, with large, round bodies, but they are not “hairy”, and less yellow than black.
They bore perfectly round holes in wood to lay their eggs, which might explain why he’s hanging around your deck. You might look at the undersides of the railings and other sheltered spots to see if there are any holes there. Honest, they’re perfectly round, and look as if someone used a drill to make them.
Anyway, check it out. If it’s a carpenter bee, you need to do something about it. They can cause a lot of damage to the wood members of decks and houses.
I think it’s neat that you’re being spied on by a bumble. Maybe he’s just one of those intensely curious types. Maybe all his life he’s been dreaming of becoming human, so he watches your house in his spare time, longing for the ability to walk upright and use silverware. And then he goes back to his hive, and tells all his bumble friends about the amazing humans, and they dismiss him as nothing but a dreamer, and berate him for wasting time on those weird bipeds when he should be collecting pollen.
I plan on getting a better look at him tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain. He may be a carpenter bumble, although I didn’t see a tool belt or a butt crack.
Seriously, we did have some carpenter bumbles a few years ago, and I did a scan of the railings and siding today but didn’t see any signs of boring.
That aside, let me say that I just love all ya’ll. You come up with the neatest stuff.
We had a hive of honeybees in our house (it was 12 ft. tall and 4 combs deep). We had to have the exterminators come (they said we had upwards of 20,000 bees!). It was a horror show.
Kalhoun, wouldn’t a beekeeper come & get them for free?
I’m allergic to bee bum bites & when I got one from a bumble bee I was waiting by the phone to call 911. But I didn’t need to, maybe they have another kind of venom?
I’m with Dave, on this one. That behavior sounds very much like a Carpenter Bee.
The bad news, of course, is that it wants to do terrible things to your deck.
The good news is that you are personally safe. I have never heard of a Carpenter bee sting, have heard (without confirmation, that they cannot sting), and know from experience that they generally do not sting. (Our deck and our barn had multiple Carpenter bees for several years until I was able to find and replace all the various planks and faschia boards where they had laid eggs. Each year I’d get most of them, and one or two would survive to begin the following year.)
