Lovely Lakeland Linder. The home of Sun & Fun was also the site for a
Sportair workshop last week. I left a couple of hours early in order to
beat the storms back to home in Durham NC.

The last thing you want to hear when you walk into an FBO is, "You
aren't the owner of the Maule are you? Oh boy, we've been trying to
reach you. You need to talk to the manager"

Visions of runaway fuel trucks danced in my head but I was relieved to
hear that a swarm of bees had decided to take up residence on my Maule!

The previous evening after a 7:30 fueling, the line guys noticed a brown
bag hanging on one wing tip. Closer inspection showed that it was a
swarm of bees. They seemed to attracted to the red wing tips, and
within the wing tip they seemed particularly attracted to areas of
exposed primer where the Maule paint had chipped off.

The bag-o-bees apparently extended out from the tip about 4 inches and
hung down about 6. They would seemingly attack any cars or other noisy
objects approaching the aircraft. Hornet spray was deployed which
killed several hundred but the rest remained.

By the time I arrived the next morning, the bees had migrated to the
spinner and a large number were flying in and around the cowling. Fish
and Game had been contacted and calls had been made to local beekeepers
but none had answered. The story was embellished by recent killer bee
reports around Tampa.

I saw none of this. Being a bit skittish around bees, I felt no need to
verify the reports. Lakeland has a giant terminal with a restaurant. I
had decided to wait for some bee expertise.

One of the controllers in the tower (Pat) was bee knowledgeable as was a
Sportair attendee. They both said that the bees were simply on the move
and that they would probably be gone in 2 hours or 2 days. That made
sense to me so I checked back into a local motel and decided to try
again the next day.

On the ramp the next morning, all I could see is the puddle of dead bees
under the wing. I was totally convinced that they were all gone but the
FBO manager and line guys were not. They insisted on staying close
inside some vehicles while I started it up and otherwise acted as a bee
sting dummy. Everything was clear and off I went.

Now I can add bee swarms to the list of things that can delay a flight.