Letters From The Other Side. From Cynthia.
Written by, Elizabeth .M. Thompson.

Teddy and Jim confront a few stinging problems.

Dear Del,
The Pepper Tree I’m sitting beneath was growing here when we owned this land back in the 1970’s. The boys used to play in its branches and shade pretending to be various heroes, making up games or jumping on the entrances of the Bull-ants nests to see how many they could get to come pouring out in defence of their home.
A soft pungent smell and the fine lacy leaves with their strings of delicately coloured pink berries belie the stoic nature of this lovely species we see dotted around the farms.
Nearby, the old tractor which also formed part of the children’s playthings is still quietly rusting away. The enormously heavy steel wheels blister and flake slowly in this dry air. Even the grilled metal seat and steering wheel remain in place. A myriad of insects crawl in and out of crevices and holes around the remaining engine parts content in such a safe weatherproof home in which they must have been breeding without disturbance for almost a century.
I wonder who it was who purchased it so long ago and brought it home bursting with pride to show his family and neighbours. How they must have marvelled at its power and ability to replace the team of horses which had previously pulled the ploughs and tilling machines.
What dreams and plans he would have enjoyed and what depths of despair must have followed when drought and fierce dust storms ripped out his crops and blew them away.
I wonder if it may have been illness, or war or falling markets which eventually forced him to pack up his family and belongings to walk away from his dreams leaving his beloved tractor as his only memorial. I wish it could speak to me of the past.
There I go becoming all maudlin again; my imagination getting the better of me as I worry about someone I never knew. Maybe the poor man just became fed up and decided to join a circus or married an heiress or better still, he may have inherited a pile of money and moved to another richer area. Let’s hope so.
This has been a week when someone with more knowledge of entomology than we possess would have been very helpful.
I’m not sure if you remember Del, but Teddy has until we moved to the coast, always kept a beehive just to supply ourselves and the family with honey and to help pollinate our orchards.
Many families in this area, because they have largely intermarried quite a bit over the years, have inherited acute reactions to bee stings. So if a hive swarmed in an inconvenient place, which they have a habit of doing when there are not many large trees around, people would call on Teddy to remove them. Sometimes, the bees choose places like tractor tyre hubs, chimneys, veranda posts and beams, unused barbeques, the tray of a parked utility truck or even the branch of a shrub which is just outside someone’s door.
Usually during swarming time, they are quite quiet and easy to handle so Teddy would come with a Super, as the boxes that bees are housed in are called, and he would collect the hive and take it back to our place to be added to ours or to be destroyed. People have to have a licence to keep bees and the number of hives a person can keep is strictly governed.
Jim had just such a swarm not far from his machinery shed door, so they left a box nearby with something tempting in it to attract the swarm’s attention and in a little while, the docile group obligingly settled in the box.
That evening it was very still, quiet and moonlight so the two men feeling very pleased with the easy collection of the hive from the machinery shed, decided to carry it up to the dam where they could be left to do what they wanted without causing any problems.
Bees unlike humans stay in at night, so the men wearing only protective gloves, carried the box carefully up the track to the dam. The night was so still we could hear their voices very clearly as they chatted and walked.
Jim must have inadvertently lifted the box up a little from the base as they are not usually attached and a few bees crawled out. Not happy at being out in the dark and the chilly air away from their mates, unbeknown to Jim they crawled up his sleeves.
The “Ouches, OH!” and “Bloody Hells.” carried clearly down to where we women sat. We raised our eyebrows at one another, smirked in the way the female of the species does when we know our men have made yet another mistake, and went indoors for soothing creams and tweezers for removing the stings.
Fortunately Jim’s reactions were pretty slight, so feeling emboldened by his bravery and wishing to use Teddy’s help, he suggested they tackle a problem he had with a shearers hut in a paddock a couple of kilometres away.

Evidently the man who reads the electricity supply meter was refusing to go within cooee of the shearers hut because he claimed the bees were too bad. Jim said he thought it seemed to be a pretty big hive and didn’t think he could tackle it on his own. Teddy offered his help, of course!
The next phase of bee removal swung into action the following day.
The two men dressed themselves in an assorted mixture of protective gear, gloves, hats with netting over them down to their shoulders and necks and arms covered carefully, overalls tucked into socks and a couple of plastic fire fighting jackets which they thought would not be attractive to the insects. Teddy knew some smells can really upset bees but wasn’t sure which ones. They hoped the plastic coating would be too slippery for them to bother settling on for too long.
We women stood about making clever remarks and giving advice which of course is part of our function as loving wives. To be direct and remark we thought they were making a mistake or would regret going off in the truck looking as if they were about to set off to raid a lost ark or two, we thought we would save until we were proven right…once again.
Teddy admitted later, that from the moment they arrived at the shack they both realized the job would prove challenging, as our esteemed politicians are apt to say when they really mean impossible.
It was obvious these aggressive squatters had taken up far more of the shack than just the meter box. They were now in possession of an entire wall having found places to get in between the wooden weatherboards and the plaster walls.
The men sat in the security of the utility cabin discussing strategy and assault plans on the hive which from its vigorous behaviour, showed they were not in the mood to invite visitors into their home and would repel any attempts to share any honey for scones later that day.
The fellows rather nervously opened the ute’ doors and stepped outside, closing the doors quietly. Bees sometimes don’t like sudden noises or movements; it would certainly attract any of the scouts which act as guard dogs for the hive.
Once more they carefully checked one another’s apparel for any cracks in their defences.
Fortunately they had two smoke guns but obviously because it was so large, the smoke guns would be more for personal and moral support than have any chance of quietening down the entire hive.
Teddy said he hadn’t ever seen a hive like this. The bees were very dark in colour and obviously very alert because the first scouts began a frenzied sound letting the rest of the hive know they detected intruders.
The assault began.
Teddy said the cracking as they hit against his hat sounded like handfuls of pebbles being hurled at his head.
Involuntarily Jim moved his hand defensively against them and the bees began a frenzied attack as more and more of them poured out of the crevices of the building and hurled themselves against the hard plastic fire coats the men wore. The noise grew as the constant pebbling sounds increased and the humming inside the walls of the shack rose in volume as the rest of the swarm became increasingly excited. The humming built to such a crescendo the men were gasping and feeling trapped inside the defences they wore which by now, felt incredibly flimsy.
‘Bloody Hell, I’m out of here!!!’ Jim yelled.
‘Me too.’ Teddy agreed thankfully.
It was at this moment, they realized they had a dilemma. They couldn’t get back into the cabin of the truck. They would be followed by the bees and by this time their hats, shoulders and legs were becoming covered with the frantically angry creatures trying to sting them through even the thick gloves they wore.
Teddy too afraid to open his mouth muttered through clenched teeth something about seeing an Alfred Hitchcock movie with a similar scenario. Both men with the same thought, turned and took off back along the track at a greater speed than they had run for decades. The utility could stay where it was.
Stopping for breath, they used their smoke guns to gradually deter determined individuals clinging to various areas of their clothing. Looking back up the track they could still see the ominously dark cloud of excited bees still swarming dementedly in enormous numbers around the shack.
This is where in my imagination I pictured the victorious insects cheering, however bees do such a thing, and poking their proboscises out, all the while giving one winged gestures of rude defiance toward out departing husbands.
Still puffing and shaken, the men walked home, occasionally stopping to smoke a tenacious tenant intent on having its revenge from their clothes.
Once they arrived back at the farmhouse, it was obvious to us they had been very frightened and so being the caring wives we are, we left saying anything unsympathetic until the following day.
Both men had a few stings. Teddy sported a couple on his left wrist where they had somehow crawled in under a glove and his wrist was fat very swollen and stiff.
Jim’s left cheek must have been stung at least twice as the weight of the bombarding insects allowed them near enough to settle and sting. He looks very lopsided today and is eating and chewing very carefully and slowly and peering at us rather malevolently at times from beneath a very fat eyelid.
Smiling at some of Margaret’s very humorous asides has, for one reason or another also seems to have been a problem.
Teddy’s wrist is still swollen but the worst of the pain has gone and it is at the very itchy stage as the sting venom gradually disperses. Their language about the squatters in the shearers shed is graphic and quite unrepeatable, but it is clear Jim will have to buy a couple of relocatable homes for his shearers this year.
That evening after the bees having repelled the two mighty invaders and gone to bed satisfied with their days work, we drove the men back to retrieve the truck.
Jim is now considering his list of options for the shack’s future and it appears to be a short list which includes, an expensive payment to a professional company of pest exterminators which, by the time they travel all the way here, would cost Jim more than the shack is worth, or a lighted stick of gelignite, or a Molotov cocktail, after the fire restrictions are over for the summer of course.
It is as well Margaret and I didn’t say all the very clever and tediously superior things we had thought of while we tended to our husbands because the following day Margaret needed something from the cupboard in which she keeps her preserves.
‘Cynthia, quickly, fetch the spray.’ She yelled from the hallway. I grabbed the nearest pest spray and ran to her aid thinking she had a spider in her cupboard. She harbours a deep dislike toward them.
Instead of the spider I expected, her cupboard was a seething black mass of ants running over, around and across every shelf, bottle and jar of her preserves. Fortunately the jars and bottles were all sealed and the contents safe but it was obvious she had a complete and very sexually potent queen who had been enlarging the nest at a great rate.
Our meal was forgotten as it took us two hours to remove the jars, wipe them down, all the while trying to stop the little blighters running up our arms, and make sure the entire cupboard shelving was clean. At the same time we needed to keep killing the escapees trying to get away to other parts of the house.
They were only a small breed but they could run exceptionally fast. I suppose having six legs helps.
Eventually we found the nest and when we thought about it later, they couldn’t have chosen a more perfect place. It was in the top of a coffee making machine Margaret hadn’t used in a couple of years and will probably never use again in case she embarrasses herself by serving crunchy coffee with dead ants floating on top.
When we lived here we didn’t ever have much television because the reception signals were very unpredictable and affected by distance and weather conditions. They hardly need it now really because there are very few dull moments.
We leave for home to-morrow, I would love to turn left and keep going across to the mountains to our last home but we won’t, that is another part of our past. Probably if we did, we would find they having problems at children’s birthday parties and outdoor events because of a European wasp plague.
It’s been great fun and I hope we don’t have anything more than a few silver fish and earwigs to deal with for while. Still, even down near the coast, the insects are a hardy and prolific lot.
We shall have to visit Aunt Alice and Uncle Rodger to make sure they are not feeling neglected and I have been asked if I would like to join a philosophy class.
I’m not sure I would be able to add much to such an august and seriously earnest gathering, but it may be interesting to go and see for myself.
The friend who asked me if I would be interested has been going for many years and enjoys it immensely, although she does seem to be getting very short tempered these past few months. However, on the whole I would think people who join such groups must be calm, introspective and easy to get along with. What do you think?
Perhaps, some of the calm will rub off on your old ‘flower child friend’
Until then,
Love from Cynthia. ©