only one of this group of little boys i can hear playing outside is big enough to read the sign aloud saying to stay away from the beehives but they're all big enough apparently to know the f-word. "FUCKING bees?? they'll fucking sting us! let's fucking go!"

"seth you don't know if you're fucking allergic or not! if every fucking bee over there stinged you you'd be fucking dead!"

the irish- the irish never change

i went outside to ask them if they smelled smoke on the breeze because i've been smelling it off and on all afternoon but can't see anything aflame. "it was NOT us!!" the smallest one said. "i believe you! you know where to find a grownup if you see flames?" "my brother is here!"

they're all still out there arguing bitterly about whether or not a honeybee will sting and, if so, whether it hurts as bad as a wasp or another bee, or if it hurts as bad as getting a shot, or cutting your finger off, or falling off a cliff. discourse

well they decided to go into my yard and take the lid off one of the hives and got stung! i went outside and we all had a nice chat about why bees might mistake us for marauding bears and they're going to come back with their mothers sometime to mow the lawn lol

they're nice kids they're just too brave for their own good. i heard my neighbor yell "don't be messing with those bees! i'm filming you!" and then i heard the kids yell "aaaaaaa!!!" and i was like yep i don't know what i expected

that's the lid on the ground next to it. i'm not gonna go fix it, they can wait until brian gets home, his suit and mask doesn't even fit me. allegedly my neighbor has this event on video and i am DYING to review it. little monsters lol

i hope their parents aren't mad at me but i feel like "mom we snuck onto clearly marked private property and messed with a beehive" is hard to twist in a way that makes you sound like an innocent bystander

was it these same unsupervised daredevils that started whatever small fire i was smelling on the breeze earlier

hooligans! given the choice between a world where little boys run free and poke beehives with their friends and a world where they stay inside playing video games or are ferried back and forth to extracurriculars tho i'll take the angry bees every time

kids around here are S T A R V I N G for nature. once we got home from somewhere and they didn't hear us over the rain, they were just standing around looking at all the different mushrooms in the roses. "i wonder if fungus think!" said an 8th grade boy in a Monster energy hat

nothing in this neighborhood is any good for them. they get chased out of every place that's even a little cool or interesting and everything is sanitized, fenced off, asphalt, manicured grass. can you blame them for being fascinated by a little wild danger

one of the kids looked about 10 but he mentioned doing his 8th grade science report on bees. "what grade?" i asked in disbelief. "yeah i'm 13, everybody thinks i'm younger, we use it to pay half price for movies" he said

that and the VISIBLE beestings under his eye he kept trying to hide under his mask don't give a lot of credibility to his "it was some other, older kids, we saw them running away!" story but yknow what, i love his creativity and the loyalty of his friends who nodded solemnly

anyway who has a lead on a child size beekeepers netted veil? or an idea for how to DIY one? i figure with supervision, long sleeves and long pants, some child size gardening gloves and parental permission, i could let them go see the bees safely up close one by one

they're gonna go back in there anyway, it's up to me if they do it with a chat about safety and a grownup and a veil or on their own under cover of night in a batman costume they found in a dumpster at their uncles trailer park

@Nicole_Cliffe i haven't said welcome back to you yet but i'm so glad you're back and in light of that please enjoy this saga of some rowdy neighborhood miniature ne'erdowells learning a valuable lesson, i know you always love a saga

those kids could be smoking dope by now if they wanted to but they're spending their time getting into low-stakes trouble poking beehives. i hope they steal my apples too and smash every one of my jackolanterns. good good lads. grow tall and a little wiser and love the earth

oh. well that's a nice thing to come home to, thanks fellas

i went and found them being forced to clean up broken glass in the dentists parking lot and once again they maintain it was two older, bigger kids messing with the bees, who ran away. i think the bees will be alright and i'm still getting a child size beekeepers veil

my theory is if they can be compelled to care about these creatures then they won't do random violence towards them ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ worth a try

what can i do? i'm not calling the cops on a 10 yr old

those kids have no respect for anything but honestly i wouldn't either if i were them. i get it. they live in a shitty wretched apartment complex with no outside and they have no school now either and they're coming of age on a burning planet. perfectly appropriate to be furious

my bees are not a suitable target for violence but since when are furious people or children very good at selecting suitable targets for violence

here are the names they gave me: Pineapple, Sticks, Mystery and Little Mystery. lol. Pineapple is the ringleader and Little Mystery i think is about 6. they were missing three of their compatriots today so no names for them yet

i'm trying to come up with some beekeeping activities we can do together that will help reinforce "bees are our friends and we don't hurt them" but they're not going to go for my walfdorfy charlotte mason lesson plans. they might dip candles

we could use sidewalk chalk to draw out a honeycomb structure on the sidewalk and one kid could be the "queen bee" and one team has to bring him "nectar" (bean bags?) and the other team has to try to knock him out of his "hive"

we could mix up sugar water to the concentration of nectar and then see who can drink the most without throwing up

i have plenty of great hippie dippie bee activity ideas for children who have never watched television and live in yurts but that's not really my audience here, i'm gonna have to adapt

great idea. we could watch a youtube video of the bees dancing and try to do the dance ourselves. we could learn five words in "bee" and make flash cards. that builds language skills too https://twitter.com/capybaracarina/status/1302052355949703168

this should be subsidized by the school district honestly since apparently i'm just a freelance earth sciences teacher for juvenile delinquents

@PPSConnect can i have a grant for printer ink and a butterfly net and some yellow sidewalk chalk and some empty mason jars and cheesecloth and a pound of sugar and bandaids and fruit snacks and pinking shears and twine and a loud clanging bell

they've all seen Bee Movie and now i wonder if i should maybe watch Bee Movie so i understand what assumptions they're operating under. it looks awful and i loathe that sort of movie but here we are

i like four hour long children's movies based on classic books where a little girl in a bonnet goes on a railway journey with her sick cousin or plants an apple tree or learns about seals during WWII. i do not like "jokes"

i do not like physical slapstick humor or movies meant for children but they put in little jokes for the adults too like for some reason a marmoset gets an erection offscreen. awful dreck and disrespectful of children's intelligence

also i hate jerry seinfeld