The bees and me

By Kathleen M. Tenpas (Kathleen)
May 21, 2013

You should know from the outset that I am not a bee keeper. If you’re looking for information about honey and hives, this is not the article you want. My bees are not honey bees. They are mostly large bumblebees that buzz around sipping from my gardens and amusing me.

(Editor's Note: This article was originally published on June 20, 2009. Your comments are welcome, but please be aware that authors of previously published articles may not be able to respond to your questions.)


My bees come out early in the spring to check on the flower population and give me a look over.  By late May and into early June, they are busy making the neighbors’ horse chestnut tree hum like a giant green and white organ.  As the chestnut passes peak bloom, they move to the big rhododendron in front of our house with their best morning songs. 

Sometimes, there are so many bees present that they bounce off each other and the windows.  In the early evenings, there have been minor skirmishes between the bees and the hummingbirds, who are just slightly bigger than the bees, in a bit of a turf war.

                              
For the most part, though, my bees are not aggressive, being happy simply to drink from the flowers that grow here and, as a thank you, to carry pollen from one blossom to the next. I have a good relationship with my bees: I provide them with flowers nearly year round (no mean feat in zone 5), and they consider me part of their garden.

I have foxgloves that are probably descendants of seed planted a 100 years ago or more. 

As biennials, they have one very populous year, and one year when there are fewer blooming.  I was working out in the midst of the foxglove one day in an excessive year, trying to pull some particularly nasty grass and had my head down between two huge flower stalks when one tipsy bee bumbled out of the nearest blossom and into my ear.  It buzzed there for only a moment and backed out, flying up in front of my face to have a look at me and then flew back by my ear where it whispered an apology before moving off.  When I was finished with the grass, I sat on the rock wall and watched the bees, but had no more visitors.

When the hollyhocks bloom later in the summer, my poor bees put in overtime, sipping and pollinating.  Just about every year, one or two will light on my shoulder, too heavily burdened to fly on, and take a rest.  When this happens, you can feel them panting like tiny dogs.  They also find themselves working after dark in the hollyhocks and I have often found one wrapped around the pistil of a bloom in the morning, still asleep.

                                                                                        

There are, of course, other bees in my gardens: an occasional honeybee will wander by, but they mostly live wild back in the woods in our neighborhood, and have little time for conversation, heading to the clover fields after giving us a cursory flyby.

I also see evidence of leafcutter bees in the phlox, but they seem to be quite shy and only make their presence known in their funny half circle cut-outs.  And there are hosts of small bees or bee-like flies, with whom I have no interaction.  It is the bumblebees with their easy going personalities that keep me entertained, and my flowers seeding year after year.

About Kathleen M. Tenpas   We have a grazing dairy of 55 cows in the rolling hills of western New York State where we raised two daughters who have now blessed us with four grandchildren. I have messy, jungly beds of old roses, (some real antiques left by former owners), perennials, wildflowers and lots and lots of not so ornamental grasses! I have a Masters degree in Creative Writing: Poetry from Antioch University. I am a photographer and fabric artist and I bake a mean loaf of bread.

Helpful links   [ Mail this article | Print this article ] » Read articles about: Bees, Perennial Flowers, Hollyhocks, Foxgloves, Digitalis, Garden Humor, June Pollinator Series » Read more articles written by Kathleen M. Tenpas « Check out our past articles!

Discussion about this article:

Subject Topic Starter Replies Views Last Post The Bees and Me leopoldconnecti 2 16 Jul 21, 2010 8:09 PM So beautiful! adinamiti 16 104 Jul 4, 2009 9:49 AM Bumblebees Suejardien 1 9 Jun 23, 2009 10:28 AM Decline of English bumblebees! NEILMUIR1 3 30 Jun 22, 2009 9:56 PM Delightful! dixc 3 11 Jun 22, 2009 3:10 PM

You cannot post until you login.