On Thirsty Bees, and Benevolent Bee Removal

For many days in a row I delightedly had noted at least three dozen honey bees buzzing around my fountain, many of them lined up in a row drinking from it like winged mini cows along a trough. Each morning I gently refilled the fountain to the top so that the insects would not have to struggle ( and likely drown) for their water.  I told a friend of mine in the neighborhood about it and she said she had no bees at all among her apple blossoms. It was " a puzzlement," to quote the King from The King and I.

Then, the other evening, my "everything-is-of-intense-interest" terrier, Lillian J. Russell, went into a major barkathon at the front door. The low key man standing there was asking if he could "borrow some power" from us so as to extract the bees from an impromptu hive on the foreclosed  property next door.

Well!  I went next door with him, dragging my extension cord, explaining about the major bee drinking marathons going on at my place. Mountain Bee Man, Dennis Parks,  said I had been keeping them well-irrigated during  an extremely dry period in Albuquerque.  And bees en masse, who knew, can drink as much water in a day as a large, hairy dog!  Apparently, I, Foodie, was an unlikely heroine to the inadvertent bees next door.

Feeling chuffed and halo-deserving,  I watched as Dennis and his apprentice began to set up the vaccuum-cleaner-like machine that would gently remove the bees from their dog house and into their new portable home. Their efforts to save these creatures and make them comfortable genuinely touched me, given the times we live in, or rather the violent news with which we are bombarded each day.  Credit, too, goes to the realty company or the bank people or someone who chose to hire a professional bee crew to relocate rather than eliminate this unlikely colony.  ( Bee Man expected the bees would be moved to either the east mountains of Albuquerque or to Corrales, a rural Spanish land grant community along the Rio Grande.)

My physical reward, not that I needed one, came a few hours later in the form of a plastic bear filled with honey from the Bee Man's honey farm. Readers, it was sublime.

( Since I did not take a pic of the bees drinking,  I am grateful to http://www.tonitoni.org/images/050422_beesdrinking.jpg for the shot above.)

Comments

[Jilara]

Bless your for your bee watering trough! Especially with bees mysteriously vanishing, nowadays. So many people don't understand how much we depend on these wonderful little gals! Before I got my hobby hive, everyone in my neighborhood was complaining how little fruit they were getting on their trees. Now, we're back to bumper crops!

[Foodie]

Glad to hear that, Jilara--where is your hive?

[John]

What a great story, Auntie! This is just what I needed to start my Saturday right after my usual scans of the news sites for the "the violent news with which we are bombarded each day". A cool, cloudy day here in Maine. I gotta get outside and plant some salad mix. Potatoes go in the ground tomorrow. Yeehaw!

[Foodie]

Keep planting those seeds and seed potatoes, Neph---whether or not this is the "best of all possible worlds," it is the one we have and I love returning to Candide's final words, after all his trials and tribs---"let us cultivate our garden."
!!

[Niall Harbison]

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[Jilara]

I do urban beekeeping in San Jose, California. There are a number of us around the urban South Bay Area. (Alas, once this was "the Valley of Heart's Delight, a great fruit producing area, and now it's just Silicon Valley.)