A Month in Florida

Polly and I are back down in Florida again. We decided to spend a month picking out and buying furniture and other necessities for our Wimauma House. This first blog is to make you aware of the different types of insects that you find during the hot months (its been in the 80's and 90's since we got here) versus the colder winter months.

On the way down we stopped overnight at my step-brother Walter and Marion's house in South Carolina. Sitting in their TV room which overlooks Lake Hartwell we saw a bunch of big bees (at least an inch long) fling all around and fighting with each other. Walter says he gets them every year and they are called Carpenter Bees. He took us out on the back deck and showed us why they are called Carpenter Bees. They were all busy drilling holes into the siding on his house. Very neat and round holes all about 3/8" in diameter. After that they lay an egg in each and seal it in with bees wax. He hasn't found anything to stop them (I found some sprays on the Internet that are supposed to repel them which I have forwarded to him).

Next are the Love Bugs. You can seem them flying all over the place in pairs connected back to back.

A lot of them died with a smile on their faces on the front of my pickup truck and mine wasn't cover with too many. Some semi's come in almost black with Love Bugs.

I cleaned up my trucks lincense plate by becoming a Florida resident.

And finally in cleaning up the leaves around the outside of our house, I apparently found a nest of red ants. They didn't hurt that much when they bit but the bite festers and itches for a week.

I poisoned them all.