First aid

 

First aid

Cross stitch waiting to be started

I wasn’t expecting to use the bee remedy I mentioned in yesterday’s post so soon, if at all, but this morning, Barry found a bee on the conservatory floor. He picked her up and took her outside away from curious cats and dogs.

I mixed a sugar water solution and fed it to the bee, which was very sluggish and disorientated. After several minutes I picked her up on a stem of herb robert (Geranium robertianum, wild geranium) and put her on a ceanothus flower. She is breathing and moving around, but not making any effort to fly, and it is now several hours since she was first found. It is also rather cool and breezy, not the best conditions for a weakly bee, so I don’t really hold out much hope for her, but at least she’s got a full tummy.

I don’t know what species of bee she is; all I do know is that she is not a honey bee. She is such a little creature, so fragile, so important.

Another cross stitch waiting to be started

As busy as a bee

 

As busy as a bee

All images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There wouldn’t be sunflowers,
Wouldn’t be peas,
Wouldn’t be apples,
On apple trees,
If it weren’t for fuzzy old,
Buzzy old bees,
Dusting pollen
From their knees.

Aileen Fisher (1906-2002)

It has been a pleasure to see so many bees recently in the garden, flying from flower to flower, taking the nectar and filling their pollen baskets. 

 Honey bees usually sleep for up to eight hours at night-time in the hive, though they will sometimes sleep in flowers. Young bees may take frequent daytime naps.

Sleeping bees sometimes hold each other’s legs, but a single bee may fall over sideways, holding on with its mandibles to its sleeping post.

Some bees require emergency treatment. A bee that is not flying or collecting nectar is a bee needing help. The quickest way to help it is to find a flower. Otherwise, prepare a sugar water solution of one part sugar to two parts water, and offer it to the bee. Sugar water should not be left out for bees as a general rule, because it will not give them the nutrition they need and may prevent them from visiting flowers and pollinating them. One would think that honey would be a good thing to offer tired bees, but that is a way of introducing potential disease to a colony.

It can take as long as thirty minutes for a bee to recover sufficiently to gather enough energy to fly away.                                                     

However, if the bee does not respond and consume the sugar water, it is likely that she has reached the end of her life.

I have never seen a sleeping bee and the photographs I have included in this post show something I hope I will one day experience.