A tale of two bees

A bee drinking honey aided by a cocktail stick.  The dishcloth is old if your wondering

This Is a quick tale about two bees, and one nutter (my mother) who tried everything in her power to save one.  A bee.  Now I know that bee numbers in this country (England if your unsure where I am) keep falling and we are encouraged to plant things that bees will love, but I feel there is a point where one must draw a line and spending 40 minutes resuscitating a bee is possibly on the wrong side of that line.  We have a very bee friendly garden with lots of plants like Echinacea, alliums and fuchsias which all seem to permanently have a resident bee on them which is good.  In fact our garden is so great we have a whole nest of Bumble bees resident in the loft, which is less great.  I love a good bee and im not particularly scared of them, unlike my boyfriend who practically has a fit every time one comes near.  Nothing gives me more amusement then hearing that when he came home from clubbing at three in the morning he was greeted in his room by a little friend in a stripey jumper that he had to spend 20 minutes escorting out. Haha.

She found the bee that needed saving lying on her last legs by the kitchen sink and promptly scooped her up on the dishcloth and took her outside to be plopped on a flower.  As it was about 9 in the evening the mother decided she was too tired and wouldn’t make the trip home to wherever that may be (probably our roof) without a little pep-me-up so brought her back in to give her some honey.  This is where I appeared on the scene to find her molesting it with a cocktail stick.  Having spooned some honey next to the bee she gently prodded it and much to my surprise it did get it’s proboscis out and start lapping it up and presently it did start looking a bit perkier.  This is where the plan fell apart a bit though as I don’t know if the bee got drunk on said honey or what but the next thing you know its laying flat on it’s back, legs waiving in the air.  As much as the mother tried she couldn’t get it to flip back over and only managed to poke the bee into the honey.  Therefore the bee now needed a wash and about 40 minutes had gone by.  It was eventually placed on a flower.  The worst of it is my dad and I had to wait for this debacle to be over before being allowed to crack open some rather tasty buns my dad had bought.  In a choice between buns and bees I choose buns.  I don’t know if the bee survived after all this but It was gone in the morning.

This isn't bee torture she is actually trying to flip it over but it was being very helpless

This is not my only experience of her dropping everything to help bees.  She was meant to be cutting and passing me twine while I was stationed in the centre of my pea patch but she got distracted by two bees she had to help that had gone cold on an allium.  My twine supply stopped.

There is not much of a tale to tell about the second bee, it just stopped for a little rest in my window so I snapped it.

Bumble Bee close up, they are surprisingly hairy little things