Honey Hunters
- Peter Stromberg
- Sep 15, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 26
By Peter Stromberg
When he walked to the edge of the manicured lawn I could tell that something had caught his attention. At first I assumed he spotted an exotic bird or a sun bathing iguana as he stared intently into the bushes. I stared with him. “What are we looking at?” I was wondering. Was it the plants? After some time I asked and he said that there’s honey in those bushes, he pointed about 20 meters away. “Could he smell the sweet nectar?” I wondered. He said, “Look at all the bees.” At first glance as I looked a little closer I could see a random insect fly by here and there. As I looked longer I could see a faint pattern form. The bees were consistently flying through the same opening in the dense bush, like a bee highway. It took me about five minutes to really focus and see what Jair was seeing. He explained that at the end of that “road” is their hive, and that's where the honey stash would be. Little did I know that he planned on climbing down there and getting that honey.
After the venom started entering my blood stream I could feel my face start swelling up immediately. Like after you get punched in the nose hard and your whole face feels bigger. My chin, neck and cheek had been stung. I was hit. I counted four stings and I knew that I was about to be in trouble if I panicked. The urge to run was overwhelming only superseded by the urge to smash the vicious creatures that were stuck in my beard and repeatedly injecting their poison in me, but you can’t smash ‘em. A brief childhood memory flashed in my mind, my brother and I always had a rule of no face punches while fighting. No punching in the face! I thought to the bees.
