Last night friends of our came over with their kids for dinner. We were going to eat inside, but the kids decided to run around in the garden before the pizza arrived and the weather was actually perfect for dining al fresco. While the waning days of summer are ideal for outdoor dining, they are also rife with ornery bees just looking for their next fix. And let’s face it: no one enjoys having a yellow jacket hover over their food. They may be harmless, but they’ve got a bad rap for hanging around where and when they are least wanted. So we moved all the necessary acoutrements to the table on the deck but before a single crumb of food left the house I insisted on rigging up our bee catchers. My mother-in-law hangs these out on her deck and I’ve seen them at several restaurants. I finally snagged a couple at the Superstore in late winter in the clearance aisle for some silly price (in our house we call these a “deal of the ‘centch'”–as in century) and by gosh, they work! You simply fill it up with a bit of juice (we used orange) and the bees fly up the centre, the cork at the top prevents them from flying out and within seconds they start doing the backstroke in the juice! They are worth the investment–a whopping $1.79 I think it was–if you enjoy taking your meals outside.
