So that’s what happens to the giant gingerbread displays after the holidays.
I’d always wondered about how they manage these creations, and what happens afterward. That’s pretty cool.
The giant house at the Grand Floridian is the biggest, but not the only, amazing gingerbread display at the resorts. There’s a gingerbread carousel, and I believe the Contemporary resort has something, so that’s a lot of sweet stuff that gets recycled and composted and fed to bees.
Now I understand why that little bee was so fearless about demanding frosting. If they do this after every festival display, those bees are tiny frosting addicts!
In my weird, Gothic horror upbringing I was raised to fear bees and bats. I was actually told the ridiculous old wives’ tale about bats getting tangled in your hair, when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old. I was an adult college student in an environmental biology class before I met and fell in love with the cutest little bat. It had flown into the gym and was rescued, and our professor took the opportunity to give us a close up look at a bat. It was in a tiny creature carrier, it looked scared to death, and it was just so adorable and velvety and looked like a tiny stuffed toy. They rehydrated it and released it, it had had a really bad day.
And that’s how I finally got over my bat phobia. They are precious and excellent neighbors, and now when I hear them at night I cheer them on: “Eat those mosquitoes, little buddies!”
Ditto with bees. I want to go back and apologize to every bee I was ever mean to, let alone the ones I might have killed. I will now happily share my cupcake leftovers.
Do I forgive my parents for inflicting these and so many other baseless fears on me as a child? They were the products of their environment, they didn’t know any better, but I wish they’d made some sort of effort to not share every old wives’ tale they were raised on with me. We didn’t live in the backwoods, they were both educated and read books, but looking back on my childhood I realize how even for my era, it was weird. I had to do a lot of educating myself.
Bats and bees are our adorable little friends.
Wasps and hornets are still worthless bastards though.
You’d have loved being at my house a couple of months ago! We had bats in the house every evening. They would cling to our kitchen cabinets and fly here and there. My dog barked constantly when they were around. I had to chase them toward the door so they’d fly out, but they were right back the next day. It cost me $1200 to have the house bat-proofed.
LOL! I don’t think I’d like them as visitors, they can stay outside. Many years ago we had a “citrus rat” issue. (I swear citrus rats are just rats that live in citrus groves. ) Way back in the day we actually had a citrus grove at the edge of the neighborhood. When citrus canker took out the trees the grove owner sold out and a subdivision went in. The rodent population relocated. We had to have the house rat proofed, which is probably very similar to bat proofing.
Thank you for the information! Amazing. I do love bees and try to care for them in my garden. And, yes I agree about wasps and hornets – miserable creatures.