Well, the bees didn't magically disappear during the night, so we went ashore to see if we could find some help. We went into the Visitor Information Center and started to tell the young guy about the bees and he says "Oh no, don't worry. We don't have bees here." Then I remembered that I had taken a photo and showed it to him. At first he started laughing and brought his buddy over who joined him. Then they started telling us all sorts of remedies...smoke, gasoline, poison, etc. Then the second guy went away and came back with an older gentleman who was allegedly the local bee expert. Not sure why they would have a bee expert if they don't have bees, but that is beside the fact.

The beekeeper agreed to come out to the boat and rid us of the bees for a mere $10US. Although it was our last bit of money, we were more than happy with this agreement. He came with us to the store to buy two bottles of "special poison" which we put in a spray bottle and diluted with water. While walking through town, the second guy proceeded to tell every person we met on the street of our predicament, and they all got a good laugh at our expense. Back on the boat, the beekeeper instructed me and Chris to go below while he marched right up to the bees and started spraying from less than a foot away. He was covered with bees but didn't seem the least bit fussed and they didn't seem to be stinging him either. After about 20 minutes of this, he told us we could come out. There literally must have been more than a thousand dead bees. Everywhere.

We took the hose and he helped us clean them all off. We also noticed that there was wax on the boom, as they had been trying to build a permanent home there had we not done something drastic. We felt a little bad killing that many innocent little creatures, but we really had no choice as we needed to get sailing and certainly couldn't do so with them guarding the cockpit from us. Fortunately there was one little bottle of the special poison left over which the beekeeper left with us "for the next time." We are hoping there will be no next time.