After getting stung under his eye, I had Courtney take a double dose of antihistamine, ibuprofen, and put ice on it. It seemed to be holding it’s own before he went to bed. He went to bed early for him, but antihistamines can do that .

I heard him get up this morning, vaguely, and then after a while I realized my door was open and figured he had poked his head in my bedroom. I got up and checked on him and he said he had called out at work. Then he told me to turn on the light so I could see his face. His left eye and surrounding area was totally swollen.

He went back to sleep and I got up and went to Costco. I realized later that I should have called Group Health and made an appointment for him, but I didn’t have his ID# or SS# (both in the room he was sleeping in.) By the time he woke up, there were no appointments at any of the clinics around us. Off to Urgent Care on Capitol Hill in Seattle!

Traffic was good and we made good time up there. I dropped him off and went to find parking. I lucked out to find a 2 hour spot just before the entrance to the Group Health parking garage.

I walked into the UC waiting room just as Courtney was being called in. He was processed and put into a room very quickly.

The doctor came in a short wait later. I remembered him from one of Darrel’s visits to UC (he is a real cutie!) He asked Courtney what kind of bees and Courtney said, honey bees, the doctor asked what he did to make them mad.

Courtney said he was moving the hive and it came out that we had 11 hives. I said that his dad had died recently so Courtney was taking over the bee keeping.

He asked us how we were doing, touched my hand, and was genuinely interested. Courtney said it had been hard at first, but we were doing better.

I was sitting there with tears gathering in my eyes. It amazed me that this urgent care doctor who sees so many people every day, took the time to talk to us about it when my normal doctor didn’t when I saw her in December!

Back to Courtney…he got a big dose of prednisone orally. The doctor sent a message to Courtney’s regular doctor to see about getting a prescription for some more steroids in case of future issues. Plus, he put in a prescription for an EpiPen…just in case his allergy to bees gets worse (which it probably will.)

We were in and out within about an hour which was nice as we missed the traffic both ways!

As we were driving home, the neighbor down the street, who has a couple of our hives in his yard, called Courtney and said he had a swarm at his house!

I dropped Courtney off and went to the store. He bravely donned his bee suit and put together another hive box and went down and captured the hive.

A while later, I looked out into our back yard and told Courtney, there was another swarm starting. (You see thousands of bees flying around an area.)

Courtney went out and put another hive box under the swarm (in his suit) and waited for them to calm down a bit. He managed to get the swarm in the box and closed it up. Then he checked to see if it was the same swarm from the day before.

Nope. It looked like the other one was still in the box.

I made up some sugar water for the new hive so Courtney didn’t have to steal more honey.

If all of the swarms stick around (they don’t always like their new homes) we will have made up for the two that died over the winter.

No pictures since Courtney didn’t want me to post his swollen face! But I have them if you are interested. Ha, ha!