A ball of bees
This morning at school, we were treated to a rare occurrence of a swarm of bees that had decided to spend the night hanging on to the underside of the eaves of our library.
Somewhere in the center of that swarm is a queen bee looking for a home for her flock. That's about an 8 inch ball of bees with one thing on their mind and that is to protect their queen. Interestingly, they were very non-aggressive. While I was taking some of the shots this morning, I had a bee get entangled in my arm hairs. I tried to blow it off, but that didn't work and so I had to eventually flick it off with my free hand. I didn't get stung in the process, which was a good thing.
Mother Nature is a wonderful thing. I kept looking at that ball and it would move about all the time. It wasn't static. It just made you wonder about the dynamics of all of those bees buzzing up there, flying perhaps, but clinging to one another with a sole purpose in mind. Do we have the same fortitude to stick together like that in a team that large for a single purpose? It gave me pause to wonder at the marvels of Mother Nature.
Very nice shot, with that one lone bee coming in for a landing. I've seen this sort of thing before; kinda freaky at first, but fascinating once the initial shock wears off. This reminds me a bit of "The Boll Weevil Song", which was a hit for Brook Benton back in the early '60s...
ReplyDelete"The farmer said to the boll weevil,
'Say, why do you pick *my* farm?'
And the weevil laughed at the farmer 'n' said,
"We ain't gonna do ya much harm.
We're just lookin' for a home, gotta have a home.'"
Haven't heard that in decades; that's as best as I can remember part of it.
As for your rhetorical question, we've known each other long enough that you probably know how I would respond :-p