Sunday, September 18, 2011

Lighter Than an M&M

The bees seem to be getting really fat on our Phlox pollen this year. Really, really fat! Hindenbee fat! Supersize me fat! Heavy enough to bend the plant ninety degrees fat! Able to hang on to a fragile petal in twenty miles per hour wind fat!

This summer, for various reasons, I have spent more time looking out our front family room windows than I usually do. The view out into our yard is partially obscured by several pink Phlox that have lived there with varying degrees of success for the past decade or so.

Marsha uses the growth of these tall perennials as an indoor guide to the passage of the gardening season. In early summer they make their first annual appearance barely peeking over the top of the widow sill. Then week-by-week they climb past the two white horizontal lines formed by the frames inside the windows panes. Finally they shoot up into the upper windows and sway calmly in the light warm weather breeze.

I didn’t really notice the bees until late July. They were, at that time I thought, larger than I remembered from years before. And now they seem to be considerably larger still.

Now granted “considerably larger” in a bee is a relative concept. According to the average size of a bumblebee is from 12 to 16 millimeters (1/2” to 5/8”) and their standard weight is one tenth of a gram or four one hundredths of a ounce. For comparison one M&M candy (regardless of color) is ten times heavier at 1.13 grams/ .04 ounce.

Periodically one or two of the little honey-makers sneaks inside our family room and hangs out at these self same windows looking longingly at these self same Phlox. This breach in our security has been going on for several years and Marsha and I have yet to figure out where the point of entry is. In any event the bees are quite passive – either hovering lazily alongside the glass or taking a break on the windowsill. My job is to capture our visitors in some paper product, usually a napkin, and (without crushing them) to transport them back to their native outdoor habitat. The wood pulp cocoon feels weightless and if it were not for the gentle vibrations I can feel in my hands I would have no idea whether I was carrying anything or not.

Once outside I open up the swaddle like a magician releasing a dove and the bee floats away into the ether. The audience in my family room politely applauds.

Still, in spite of their gravity-free state, the little humming insects seem to me to be transitioning from being quite easily seen, to extremely noticeable, to blocking-out-the-son enormous. So I decided to carefully observe what was happening in my family room garden. Here, combined with some supporting information that I gleaned from the Internet, are my findings.

All morning the Phlox is in the shade. There is absolutely zero bee activity.

At noon the sun begins to warm the tall pink perennials and shortly thereafter the bees, mid-sized and agile, arrive by the dozen. For about an hour they dart from flower to flower, somehow avoiding mid-air collisions. Then the majority (presumably younger guys with other things to do) leave. Two of them, whom I’ve named Cliff Clavin and Norm, settle in for the afternoon.

By two p.m. Cliff and Norm have attached themselves firmly to their favorite barstools and are growing both larger and logier as their bodies and brains become progressively more encased in nectar. This increase in size and lethargy continues throughout the afternoon until, fully satiated, they drag themselves slowly away from their afternoon hangout and head home where they are hailed as heroes and gently stripped of their temporary sweet outer skins by their fellow hive mates. Then, after sleeping it off, they come back the next day for another round, or two, or three.

Not every worker bee is cut out for it – witness all of the less experienced early afternoon dropouts. But if it is what you are meant to be, it’s probably not that bad a life being a “regular”.

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name.

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