I just did a quick search through my photos to find one of the images presented here, below: a bee who crawled on my finger and rested there a while two years ago.
What I found in the photos was image after image of insects on my hands, in my hands:
a dead bee I buried last summer
an orange and brown butterfly who landed on my hand in Australia in November
a sal bug I tenderly balanced on the palm of my hand recently
a dying blue dragonfly with whom I sat until he expired several years ago
a cocoa-colored butterfly with large white spots who perched on my left ring finger in Canada
in 2018
and more.
So, I shouldn’t find it surprising that I have a new July habit of eating my breakfast with bees. I sit on the low step next to my lavender bush which puts me at eye level with forty-ish foraging bees of at least three different species.
It shouldn’t be surprising, either, that I am asking permission and then gingerly stroking the large, furry, yellow-and-black bees who allow me this privilege as they swarm the purple-bloomed plant.
Yes, I’m petting them. And in the places where my fingertips and the backs of my fingers are uncalloused, I can actually feel the soft fuzz on those small, busy bodies.
I accidently stepped on a bee in the back yard when I was a very little girl. I remember feeling, and then seeing, the stinger hanging from my left arch. The Bactine with which my mother taught us to douse our wounds might have killed “99.9% of germs” but its “no-sting formula” had a bite much stronger than that poor dead bee’s modified ovipositor. But once the stinger was removed from my fat little foot, I went right back out to that same place in the back yard to see if I could find the bee with whose appendage I had inadvertently tangled. I felt terrible that day when I learned the bee had torn itself to death trying to free its stinger from my thick-skinned foot. I wanted to apologize to her.
I have tried to pet “the lavender bees” in recent years as well. I have promised bees in prior lavender seasons that I would leave some of the harvest for them. I have kept that promise.
But this season, it has become a habitual practice of abiding with them throughout my meal, repeatedly seeking consent, offering my finger, sometimes getting lucky and making contact.
I talk to the bees. Out loud. I go over to them each of the many times a day I’m outside. I observe their quick-touch behavior as they move from flower to flower, stalk to stalk. I notice how their legs are sometimes splayed and the many angles at which they approach the flowers. I praise and honor and admire them.
I have not cut the lavender yet for myself…weeks beyond when I normally would have created lavender wands, sachets, bouquets, and tea. At least I continue my practice of rubbing lavender across my palm and lifting the refreshing scent to my nose as I pass the bush to and from my car, to and from the garbage and recycling bins, to and from the shed.
Through all of it? I am feeling deep within how utterly interconnected we are: loving the lavender in our respective bee and human ways.
In this July heat-and-dormant-grass time, missing the nesting birds who have now largely departed for life beyond this yard, the gifts of focus become lavender scent and beauty, and endearing bees.
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| Yellow-Fronted Bumble Bee |
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| Yellow-Faced Bumble Bee |
