Oh Honeybee

Yesterday, as I went out the French door of our family room to attend to some kind of garden job, I saw out of the corner of my eye that a honeybee was caught in the long silks from the grasses that I collect for mulching pot plants. So as I observed the progress or really lack of it, I gently nudged a space through the maze of long silky strands to free up one of the longest honeybees I’d ever seen. While I was doing that several smaller flying bees were happily taking pollen from every imaginable flower despite it being fall with few blooms left for that. But the massive growth of self planted lemon balm that has enveloped every container or empty bit of soil does have a fair share of tiny blossoms on their fading stalks. So while the small bees were all quite busy, our very long black and yellow striped sweetie was having none of that since it appeared not to be able to do more than cling to a leaf. As I tried to encourage a more daring adventure I saw what appeared to be the biggest collection of pollen on this creature’s bulging hindquarters. It seemed to me to be the largest and longest bee I’d ever seen in nature and so I thought it might be a queen. But those girls just stay around the hive making royal jelly or something and wouldn’t be out foraging with the rest of the workers. Then I thought, well maybe it is a queen looking to change hives and is checking out this blob of silks as a possibility for one. Eventually the unspecified subject managed to get free (with my assistance along with a twig) and started walking on the ground, found my gumboot and continued to climb it. But something was definitely amiss with this honeybee and so on my trips around the garden today, I found the stoic little buzzer in the same general vicinity clinging to a different tiny leaf. Again a small twig seemed to make her move one foot and within another few minutes she appeared to be slightly active although she is definitely on the decline. Either something is wrong with her GPS and she’s getting mixed signals and doesn’t know how to find the hive or she’s too old and too weak to return. So she hangs on to the small bit of life she has left.

In some ways I’m honored that her last days will be here, so I can comfort her with my soft voice and pet her again on her tiny back. She already knows I won’t hurt her, just as I know she won’t sting me.

Life and death again on the farm is the constant reminder of our own mortality.