Last Wednesday, a Bee landed on my desk on the first floor of the house here in Pennsylvania. I swatted it and killed it. Figured maybe it came in when I opened the door. Not that lucky . . . .
The next day, Thursday, I found TWELVE dead Yellow Jacket Bees laying on the window sill of the big bay window in my living room, and more flying around the house.
I called my neighbors for a referral to an Exterminator and got one. He came over that afternoon. There is clearly a hive in my porch roof out front. A bunch of the little buggers flying around a particular post that supports the porch roof, and they can be seen going in and out in very significant numbers.
The Exterminator put on his Bee Suit and began spraying some type of poison powder into the post opening. He explained the powder does NOT kill on contact, it gets on the bees, and when they are in the hive at night, GROOMING EACH OTHER, they ingest the powder, which kills them.
He sprayed for about a half hour. The Yellow Jackets were pissed-as-hell, trying to sting him, to no avail.
The Exterminator told me that "if I got enough in there, or hit the hive, they will all be dead in a day. If you see them after a day, call me back and I'll spray again.
Friday, there was some activity into and out of the post area, but FAR less than previous.
This morning, I woke up and found EIGHTEEN (18) more dead Yellow Jackets on the window sill inside my living room, and there's a whole slew of them at that post outside. I called the exterminator back.
He arrived about an hour later, drilled up through the fascia into the ceiling of the porch, and deployed quite a bit more of that posion.
He and I then took a walk around the entire house to look for how they might be getting INSIDE?
When we got to the workshop on the lower level, which I had excavated OUT with a little Bobcat, and enclosed with T-111 to replace the totally exposed wooden lattice that previously enclosed that undeveloped area; he walked in a noticed the piles of what __I__ thought was mold. It isn't mold.
It is the activity of Powder Post Beetles.
They eat wood. They put their offspring in larvae into it, and the larvae digest the wood. Those piles of what I thought was mold, is crap from the Powder Post Beetles.
He told me these beetles do as much if not MORE damage than TERMITES and that they are already well on their way to eating the wood structure of my house under the living room extension.
Here's a screenshot of a picture I took this morning, showing just a small area of only one floor joist:
See all the tiny pinholes? THat's where the larvae have been laid and have eaten INTO the wood.
See what appears to be sawdust coming OUT of other holes? Those are "exit holes" where the larvae have grown to adulthood and have exited.
There are literally HUNDREDS of these holes on almost every floor joist, and literally DOZENS AND DOZENS of holes showing the sawdust-like crap coming out of them.
The Exterminator poked a screwdriver into the joists, and they are significantly compromised.
This is a friggin disaster!
He told me I am going to need to replace at least ten floor joists because they are laden with tiny little holes, indicating larvae have bored into the wood there, and I am also going to need a very significant treatment with a special pesticide to try to get rid of these things.
He also told me "Homeowner's Insurance will NOT cover pest damage."
Oh man, what a week. I don't need this shit.
AUGUST-INTO-SEPTEMBER FUND RAISING
During the final calendar week of each month, I turn to YOU, my readers and Listeners to my radio show, to help fund this endeavor. It's been this way since the year 2000 when the show began. Without YOU, there is no Hal Turner Radio Show or web site.
The Expenses this month are higher than usual because of web traffic and streaming audio listeners online:
Radio Stations: ~$5,,000
AMAZON WEB SERVICES for this site: ~$3665.14
A big chunk of this bill is DATA TRANSFER CHARGES; you read or listen online, and I get Billed for the transfer of that data to YOU.
Other Expenses:
Blue Ridge Cable Modem (PA Location): $199.95
AT&T Cellular Failover Modem (PA Location) $65.
ViaSat Satellite Uplink Failover (PA Location): $243 47
Verizon FiOS (Fiber Optics) [NJ Location] $187
Verizon Cellular Failover modem (NJ) $35.
Vonage Phone Lines (Inbound Radio Show Callers) $187.35
Music Licensing from Adobe: 29
I also got a "Heads-up" from Alan Weiner at radio station WBCQ. Earlier this year he had to increase my air time costs by five percent (5%) due to increased electricity costs. He told me about two weeks ago, that the station just got hit with . . . ready for this . . . .a SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT (75%) Electricity price increase! He said he's going to have to talk to customers like me about that, and I have no idea at all whether the new price is going to allow me to even continue the show - at least on WBCQ.
Making this all the more stressful is that upwards of FIFTY PERCENT of my "Subscribers" have gone bad on payments over the past year. Their credit cards are being declined. Not "Blocked" over any cancellation, just declined.
So right now, I need all the help I can get. Things are getting way critical and frankly, I wasn't even sure up to last night, whether I was going to even continue trying. That's why at the end of the show last night, I made clear "I have NOT begun monthly fund-raising." I'm just not sure this can go on.
Whether YOU donate or not, will afford all of us, the answer.
Please donate below:
