Childhood Stories #1 - The Time My Dad Accidentally Brought Home A Bee's Nest

I have so many funny stories from my childhood. My dad is a funny guy who has always managed to get himself into strange and unfortunate situations. I have so many stories I can tell, so I might make this is a frequent thing.

It's my dads birthday today, so what better time than to share one of the funniest stories I can remember, when he accidentally bought home a bees nest. And when I say bees nest, I am not talking some small-scale bunch of 20 bees.

My dad has always been a handy guy, and as a child, our weekends were spent going to the dump so he could scavenge through the tip face and look for things to bring home.

One of my dad's hobbies (and still is), is finding old mowers, whipper snippers and other small engines, fixing them up and selling them. Recycling has always been his thing, and when it comes to repairing things with an engine, in most cases he was able to get things running again and make a nice tidy sum from doing so.

People are very quick to throw things out and replace them with a newer and shinier version, repairing things isn't something most people think of doing these days (unless it's a cracked phone screen).

Maybe it's not the case everywhere, but you're not allowed to scavenge from the dump due to concerns over safety (allegedly). If they catch you, you will get told to put it back and in some cases, if it continues you can actually be banned from the dump (this actually happened to my dad once, a story for another time).

One day my dad saw a self-propelled lawn mower at the dump that he was really excited about. His strategy for getting items was simple, take a bag of rubbish or something big and pretend to dump it near the area where the item you want to take is located and then run back to the car with it.

As a child I didn't see the funny side to this, I found it somewhat embarrassing my dad liked to spend his weekends scavaging for things to take home. But that's what dads do right? They embarrass you. My dad just enjoyed scavaging the tip face like a pirate going on a treasure hunt.

He puts his haul into the back of the car and throws a blanket he has handy for situations like these over the top. Then he gets into the driver's seat and we leave. My dad is nervous about being caught (even though this isn't the first time he has done this) so he makes sure it is quite well hidden under the blanket and we drive out.

On the way home my dad remarks that the engine looks good, the base is in good condition and it has a catcher in good condition as well. My dad seems to think it might just need a carburettor clean and service. His excitement might be perceived as infectious.

We finally arrive home and my dad like an excited child unwrapping a Christmas present gets some tools and proceeds to look at the mower in more detail. Cemented in weekend routine, he asks my mother if she can please make him a cup of coffee.

And then it happens...

My dad removes the catcher from the mower and a swarm of bees come pouring out of it. When I say pouring, it literally looked like a stream of bees, something you would see in a horror movie. It looked like hundreds of bees, my memory might be conflating the number slightly.

My dad yells at me to run, fortunately, I wasn't that close and I avoided being bitten. The bees are flying everywhere, my dad starts yelling out for someone to get some bug spray and swinging his arms around.

A lot of the bees flew off unphased by this 5 foot 6 man in ripped pants towering over them. Unfortunately for my dad, some of the bees decided to hang around and attack my dad. These bees weren't a dangerous variety, just your standard common bee. He was being bitten on his exposed arms and face mostly, I think a few also bit him on his legs.

My dad yells out to my mother, "Barbara, I am being attacked by bees. Can you please get me something?"

My mother comes running out with a can of Mortein bug spray and starts spraying like a maniac into the air. By that stage, my dad had made his to the garden hose near him and started spraying into the air and himself to wash away the bees.

A combination of the garden hose and ozone-depleting bug spray (this was the 90's) disperses the bees. By this stage, my dad is starting to swell up from the bites (mostly on his face).

My mother yells at me and my five sisters with a slight panic in her voice to get in the car and we take my dad to the emergency room. He's a little swollen now, but thankfully he isn't allergic to bees or this could have ended quite badly.

I remember his eyes and lips were especially swollen, but oddly enough (and this might just be my memory) didn't seem to be too phased he had just been attacked by a bunch of bees a few minutes earlier.

On the drive, I remember thinking how lucky my dad and I were that these bees didn't get disturbed on our trip back from the dump. Who knows, if the bees had got loose in the car ride home, the situation could have been arguably a lot worse.

We finally arrive at the emergency room and we all head to the waiting room. My mother explains what had happened and everyone sits down while my mother helps fill out the paperwork.

I can only imagine the stress of being in a hospital emergency room with six kids varying in age, while you fill out paperwork for your husband who could have very much died if he was allergic to bees.

After twenty minutes or so of waiting, my dad is called through to the consultation room. The doctor gives him a couple of injections of something and some medication. The swelling becomes visibly less prominent soon after, but still quite swollen.

They ask my dad to stay back in the emergency room for observation for a couple of hours, so my mother takes me and my five sisters home. My mother seemed calm, this isn't the first time my dad has been in a bizarre situation like this.

It turns out even if you're not allergic to bees, your body still reacts to the bee venom and it can cause complications which is why they wanted to watch him. Fortunately for my dad, he only seemed to get swelling, but he tends to put on a brave face so who knows how he was really feeling.

My dad arrives home a few hours later and seems way less swollen, he goes to the fridge and cracks open a beer and sits down on the couch as if he just finished a hard day at work.

The very next day he goes outside with the same enthusiasm he had the day before, "I reckon can get $180 for this mower", he says, "It has a good engine, base and catcher on it" - he checks the catcher to make sure no more bees are in there and proceeds to fix the mower. All but forgetting about the martyr of bees that had attacked him the day before.