It's #WorldBeeDay

Most of the blossoms on our pear tree are gone. More and more of the dandelions have turned to fluff and seeds. We're several weeks from day lily blooms but it's peak time for lilacs and some local fruit trees. Since honeybees aren't native to America, I have a hard time getting terribly concerned about them. Then again, I do enjoy cranberry honey in my morning coffee and have read that bee populations are in decline.

late May lilacs in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Minnesota, several years ago, began a wild bee survey which now lists more than 400 species. I'm sure you know that Minnesota has an official state bee, the rusty patched bumblebee, as of 2019. Minnesota's chapter of the Xerces Society has lots of information about how to improve life for our pollinators and other critters such as fireflies. We're already most of the way through May, so it won't be too difficult to defer mowing for another week and a half and claim a No Mow May to help create habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. (If only we had more gopher snakes to thin out the pocket gopher population.)

apple(?) blossoms awaiting pollinators

Photo by J. Harrington

Bees Were Better

By Naomi Shihab Nye

In college, people were always breaking up.

We broke up in parking lots,

beside fountains.

Two people broke up

across a table from me

at the library.

I could not sit at that table again

though I did not know them.

I studied bees, who were able

to convey messages through dancing

and could find their ways

home to their hives

even if someone put up a blockade of sheets

and boards and wire.

Bees had radar in their wings and brains

that humans could barely understand.

I wrote a paper proclaiming

their brilliance and superiority

and revised it at a small café

featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers

in silver honeypots

at every table.

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