The Business of the Bee

I’ve been working in the front-yard garden on these recent, steamy days of early summer, when the perennial butterfly bushes come into full bloom and begin to attract nature’s pollinators.

Each season, bees are the first arrivals:  They waste no time in their efforts to collect as much nectar and pollen as they can and to fly it back to their hive for conversion into the honey that will carry them through the winter months. 

Butterfly bushes (Buddleia) come into full bloom during the very last days of June, and they continue to push out their long and colorful flowering spikes into August and September.

However, the adopted Bergeron bees have been very pre-occupied over the last three weeks with an earlier source of food – the end of June is too late for them to wait for plants that start blooming then.

To accommodate them, there are two large planters on the edge of the patio in the back yard:  They are into their second year of producing long, skinny offshoots of tiny lavender-blue flowers from two Catmint plants.  

Now, our visiting summer bees have at least two copious sources for their food supply.  They are taking advantage of every minute of every day to haul in the harvest.

No wasted time.  No wasted motion.  No extraneous expectations:  Just the opportunity to get up early each day and to accomplish what they were designed for by nature.

What an example.  I sometimes wonder – what with all of our humanly sophistication and brainpower – that we have such a hard time figuring out how to work together; to make a meaningful contribution commensurate with our abilities; and to stop tripping ourselves up as a society.

There is a lot of wisdom contained in the DNA of those little black and yellow creatures that alight on the flowers in our yard.  (Ever wonder who put it there?)

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the Fourth of July.  Happy Freedom Day.
 
(Click on any image for an enhanced view.)