I woke up this morning and heard a loud buzzing from one of my bedroom windows, like an insect was trapped there trying to get out. I opened the blackout shades (which more or less effectively seal the windows off from the room) and found at least half a dozen bees trying to get out through the glass. All the windows to the bedroom were shut and always are. There were two dead bees on the floor.
I went outside and saw several bees buzzing around the eves of the house, a yard or so away from the windows. I could also see numerous bees inside the window (the same ones I'd seen before), still trying to get out.
I had to leave for an appointment, so I closed my bedroom door so no bees would get out into the rest of the house, should they be able to get out from behind the blackout shades.
I came home five hours later. A few bees still buzzed around the outside house around the eves. But when I came inside and went in the bedroom, there were 27 dead bees on the windowsills and floor, and not one live one.
It's Southern California. The temperature outdoors was in the low sixties all day. Temperature in the bedroom was 73.
I can't find an opening that appears large enough for one of these bees, much less a slew of them, and even those openings are just light fixture cans. The windows are shut, not a crack showing. The windows haven't been opened in months.
How'd they get in, so many all at once? How'd they all die in the span of five hours? (I've never used a pesticide on the property, which is only two years old.) And do you think they're coming back? (Not the dead ones, of course, but their buddies.)
BTW, I'm presuming dead bee stingers still work, so I won't be picking them up by hand. Am I correct in that presumption?
Jim Beaver