What’s All the Buzz About? HVAC Technician vs. Angry Bees

The Deadly Bees 1966 I remember watching my first set of “Creature Features” on TV one rainy Sunday as a young teen. This particular terror trilogy started off with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and followed by Ants and finally The Deadly Bees. I don’t know which one was more terrifying – birds pecking on your face, poison ants crawling up your nose or bees covering you up like a buzzing blanket and stinging you to death. I guess it all adds up to, “Don’t mess with Mother Nature, for she will have the final word.”

The HVAC Technician is no stranger to these sorts of creatures. Though fortunately they are rarely of the mutated killer variety. Previous Technician vs. Nature stories focused on one of the HVAC Technicians’ biggest (in both size and frequency) rooftop enemies, the dreaded sea gull. However, the gull isn’t the only flying menace out there for HVAC techs. Next to the gull in frequency of HVAC animal hazards…is the hornet. Tiny little stinging bastards who can cause pain, swelling, or (Heaven forbid!) MUCH WORSE to those techs who suffer from bee allergies.

hornetAdvance Air has at least one technician with a bee allergy. Bless his brave heart, all Spring and Summer he goes from service call to service call, armed with nothing more than a can of hornet spray and an epi-pen. Boldly venturing into the unknown lair of numerous stinging insects on a daily basis, he faces down death daily. Pretty badass, if you ask me.

To keep the techs’ trigger fingers ready, we’ve considered setting up a hornet spray target training range during the off-season. Or hosting quick-draw contests with hip-mounted spray cans. So as we enter the official start of bee season with warmer weather and the start of cooling maintenance visits, local hornets should be asking themselves, “Do you feel lucky?”

See the quick draw tactics of your Advance Air tech in action, schedule your maintenance visit today!