Stopping With Bees

As summer is slipping into clouds of yellow flowers heralding shorter days and whispers of autumn, the bees continue their work. It’s been a harrowing month as I deal with sciatic nerve issues and I develop new and higher pain thresholds. So I am spending time with bees.

Bees aren’t flustered by me stopping to watch them as they methodically visit each tiny ray flower on a rudbeckia. The sunny daisy flowers of the prairie dock are humming with visitors. However, those flowers are seven feet high making close observation a little tricky. So I’m hanging out with the folks that like rudbeckia, echinacea, and the more open flowers of my Sweet Fragrance shrub rose. We’re having a good time getting some sun and having some snacks.

A bumble in Camassia

The bees are careful, thorough, and take their time to visit every viable flower, loading up pollen packets. They aren’t fussed by the small flock of goldfinches that visit the echinacea and impatiently check the prairie dock for seeds daily. If they are particularly concentrating, you can pet their furry thorax. Yes, I’ve been known to pet bees, but gingerly and lightly with greatest respect.

Any minute now the goldenrod will open and soon after that the asters, giving a last floral hurrah into November for the insects that stay and tardy monarch butterflies. The rain garden will once again be a seething humming buzz of insect life as my struggle to limit the aster and goldenrod proves elusive. Mysterious tiny wasps are sampling the parsley and dill flowers. Their bigger cousins wait patiently for me to fill the concrete leaf that serves as a bug bath each morning. With almost no rain, only the prairie plants aren’t tired and a bit crispy. So, nectar is plentiful as the yellow daisies slowly set seed.

When did you last step outside and allowed yourself to observe? Spend 10 minutes with bees as they follow Fibonacci’s elegant spiral around the chocolate chip disc of a rudbeckia. It might be the best part of your day.