Bee Crisis

If you've read our blog for a while, you know that we got bees a couple of years ago (http://oneworldfarm.blogspot.com/2008/06/bees.html).  They've been for the most part a pretty ho-hum part of our farm life.  They're very easy to take care of, and mostly we forget they're around until I remember every so often that we should not have to buy honey at the store, and convince Aaron to suit up and retrieve some honey so I can have some biscuits with honey.  For those of you who eat biscuits with jelly instead of honey, you're seriously missing out.

Anyway, Tuesday was the big day to tackle the honey problem.  Pu Lue (our Karen refugee friend and a wonderful carpenter) and his 9 year old son Pla Shee have been staying with us for a while during the week, so Aaron thought it would be fun for them to get in on the action too.  Here the three of them are all suited up:

This picture was taken about 5 minutes before the first bee sting happened.  One thing we've learned about bees is that once you're stung once, it's like the dam has been broken and you're bound to get stung again until you cry uncle.  Aaron, being oh so brave, decided to keep at it.  Four stings later, he'd had enough and decided to call it quits.  Unfortunately this time the bees gave him a run for his money.  For some reason, he developed an allergy to the bee stings for the first time in his life and his entire body broke into hives and began to swell almost immediately.  It was CRAZY!

We headed to the ER where they immediately started an IV and pumped Benedryl, steroids of some sort, and various other drugs that made him loopy into his system.  We ended up getting home around 1 am once the drs and nurses were convinced that he was on the mend and would not have a permanent "pillow hand."

I took this picture of him about 30 minutes after the bee stings.  I can't even recognize him!  For comparison, Aaron normally looks like the photo below this one.  Wierd, huh?

In all of the craziness, Bear (aka Kai) got his first bee sting, right on the noggin.  He took it in stride, though, and decided it wasn't too painful once he was able to munch on one of his coconut cookies (his favorite).