Bumble Bees Make Me Happy

I find so much joy watching and interacting with all kinds of critters, and right now, I'm really enjoying our bumble bees. They are always so busy. (Duh...  "busy as a bee....") They work so well with others. And it always looks like their teeny, tiny wings shouldn't be able to support their buff, bulky and so incredibly UN-aerodynamically designed bodies!!!! Plus, they're just fun to watch!

 

This is where I've been doing the most bumble bee watching this week, my "Bedroom Garden." (I call it that, because I can see it from my bedroom window!). This flower bed is filled with many types of flowers, but the zinnias are really putting on a show right now! It's been fairly hot, which they love, and very rainy, which they tolerate since the soil drains well, and they are blooming in profusion!
 I collect the seed-heads from my flowers every fall, and plant those seeds the next year, so I never know precisely what shapes and colors I'm going to end up with. That's fine with me; I love surprises! The sizes and colors always vary quite a bit from year to year. Last year, I had mostly pink and orange colored zinnia blossoms, but this year, I have some really interesting bright red, orange-red, lemon yellow and even a few white ones. I love how nature is constantly changing and adapting and giving us such pleasant surprises along the way!

By the way....
I have the sweetest Bumble Bees in my yard...

Yea, I know... most people don't like bees, but I do. Since I was a very curious kid, and I had to touch everything, I learned at a very young age that some bees are aggressive and some aren't. Big ol' Bumbles aren't. They are actually fairly friendly and very soft, if you can get them to hold still for you.

 

 

I take lots of pictures of my bees and I prefer to photograph my bees using a super macro mode. I like the way the pictures turn out better than when I have to zoom in from a distance. They have to get used to me being very close. The camera lens is typically within 1/2" to 4" away from them... That's pretty close. Every year, I take the time to tame a new crop of Bumbles, so they'll ignore me and continue with their own busy work while I watch them and take their photos. I also love to "pet" their soft shoulders while they're distracted by all the sweet flower nectar, and I think they like it too.... after they get used to it. Once I've kind-of tamed them, they stick around for a few extra seconds, after they've finished feeding from each flower, and I'll get a chance to pet them a bit more.

 

One year, I tried to stick little "name tags" to the black dot on their backs, so I could recognize the ones I'd been working with, but I never found a natural product that would keep my little name tags stuck on them for more than a few hours. Since it wasn't really that important, I quit bothering them and just worked with them all.

 

 

Concentrating on such tiny creatures is very soothing. I do some of my best meditating while I'm sitting by my flower garden, watching those little, round bumble bees go about their business. I breathe in deeply, relaxing muscle by muscle until I feel the tension melting from my body. I blow each breath out slowly, imagining all the "bad" stuff being blown out of my body like a dark cloud with each exhale. After a few minutes of deep breathing, the exhales are only clear air; all of the negativity, stress and pain has been cleared from my body.

I fill all of my senses with my immediate surroundings. I love the garden sounds. Right now, the buzzing sounds of the bees is most noticeable. I can identify different types of bees by the tone of their buzzing. (The little honey bees remind me of a sewing machine sound, the biggest bumble bees are more like deep rumble of a muscle car's engine!) The garden's fresh smells are always changing, but always the same; fresh cut grass, the perfume of the flowers and herbs, the tang of the naturally growing sage and the pine trees that are nearby.


Bees were on this planet long before I was born and (with luck) they'll be here long after I'm gone. They have no clue that they are so important to the survival of so many species of flowers, plants, and other creatures. They don't care that they're short and round or that their wings are really too tiny to hold them up. They just do what they were born to do every day, living life moment by moment.  I watch the bees and try to live like them, moment by moment.

 

 

Yum, yum, yum!