A Bee and Her Basket

Song - Queen Bee by Freakwater

Two bees and their pollen baskets

Enjoying my Camellias earlier this spring



"The hum of the bees is the voice of the garden."

-- Elizabeth Lawrence

Bee Yourself

Song - No Rain by Blind Melon

As to the above song - "Shine on little bee girl......."

I have this Camellia shrub outside my office window and right now it is in full bloom.  The bees just discovered it today!

Pollen on Camellia's was something I never have thought of (probably because they don't have a scent) but the bees know.

Stopping my work for awhile, I put my camera on a tripod and went outside to watch their activity.  I saw them remove the pollen and place it on their back legs.  When they had a sufficient amount, they would fly away and come back clean & ready to keep working.  How do they know when they have gathered enough pollen or too much to fly? What do they use the pollen for?

Actually they store the pollen to use when it's too cold or there are no flowers pollinating.  Stored pollen is mixed with mouth secretions to make brood food/bee bread which is essential for new little bees!

Pollen is not readily available when the bees start to rear their brood early in the year.  They rely on stored pollen.  Nurse bees consume bee bread as a stimulus to produce royal jelly for very young bees.

The bee in the above photo was taking a little break to "re-distribute" his heavy load. Now I know why they call busy people "worker bees"!

"What a kid I got, 

I told him about the birds and the bee 

and he told me about the butcher and my wife." 

 --Rodney Dangerfield

Natures Comfort

Every morning I wake to birdsong, although lately there has been a little lamb bleating from somewhere across the creek, along with a very young rooster who starts to crow at 2:30am....yipes!

Year round we have a flock of Canadian Geese overhead or down the creek and an occasional turkey or more often a night time skunk. Last night we heard two Coyote's for the first time in awhile.  There are a lot of squirrels and deer that like to nibble my rose buds.

We don't live in the country but in a semi-rural suburban neighborhood. I like these sounds as it feels comforting to live with nature. As I get older, I find I have trouble killing a spider or an ant. Even snails that destroy my garden give me pause as I just fling them away from my garden instead of mushing them like I used to. Is this because I am older and have more respect for life?

This morning I found myself cheering for a bee that came through our bedroom screen door....while my husband was trying to find the electric bug-zapper, I was cheering for the bee to escape before he came back...................the bee escaped! .......yes....!  Although, I'm still not sure how I feel about living with a mosquito all night long.....itch, itch....! I grew up in this neighborhood that we still live in and when I was small, there where so many toads every summer that you could not walk across our lawn in the evening with out stepping on one...where did they all go?   I know some of them went down the back of my blouse to be squished by my two brothers who .....were boys....and my loving brothers....who liked to torture me!  But there used to be thousand's of these toads and tadpoles....also, there used to be Walnut tree's in Walnut Creek as well as Oak trees in Oakland.  Mr. b always says, "Places are named for things that they destroy"....like Walnut Creek and Oakland. 

“Birdsong brings relief

to my longing

I’m just as ecstatic

as they are,

but with nothing to say!

Please universal soul,

practice some song or

something through me!”

--Rumi