Bees, Bees, Everywhere Bees

Last evening we were in a neighbors backyard for a dinner party. We had a wonderful time. The food was great and we were together with about a dozen or so people we all knew from around the neighborhood. 

However, there were a few dozen very unwanted guests. Yellowjackets were swarming everywhere around the food. They were at the food table where each dish had a plastic cover and they followed everyone to the seats. They also flew all around your head as you walked back and forth between the food table and the picnic table. It was crazy and I should have taken some photos of those bees.

I've never seen so many bees swarming all over a table of food like that. Sure, we've had problems with bees at picnics and other backyard gatherings over the years but this was intense. The people living there never saw anything like this in the backyard ever before. We've actually been back there on other occasions eating food and never experienced what we saw last night. They had to set up food plates of some leftovers scattered around the edges of the yard to lure the bees away from the people. Although the plates were soon covered with bees there were still plenty of them around to keep on bothering people.

The bees gradually went away as the evening became darker and after a while they were all gone. I think they were gone by the time desert was served or at least I don't remember being bothered while eating my ice cream and blueberry pie.

Overall we did have a very good time with all the food and people and a nice selection of drinks. One comment about the music. There was one of those little alexa type speakers in the window playing music from a streaming service which I think was pandora or something like that. I always pay attention to the music in any kind of party or gathering like this one. It is just in my nature after having played records in bars and provided music for parties and weddings over the years. I was surprised that over the course of the night I really didn't recognize hardly any of the music being played. It all seemed to be some kind of current adult contemporary music corporately designed not to offend anyone over 50 in any way. I didn't hear anything that would remotely be considered a hit at any time. It was just bland background music just a step away from the elevator. I'll have to ask what they were playing next time I see them.

That being said... mostly everyone including myself were probably too engrossed in their conversations to be paying attention to the songs coming out of the window. It truly was just background music.