Don’t tell the bees that summer is ending. They’re still crowding out the butterflies on the butterfly bush. The butterfly bush is where I first met the carpenter bees, and they’re still scaring me whenever I brush by.
Yes, it may be hard to be believe but there are bees that scare me. That rattling buzz right in the ear is hard to take, even when you know they’re just passing by. They make no mistake about who they think is getting in whose way. So when they decide they’re going to hang around, I stay out of their way and move very slowly.
The little bees never scare me. The black one is Halictus ligatus, a sweat bee that usually carries lots of pollen in the saddlebags on its legs. But not this time; it’s a male. He’s not collecting pollen, just looking out for what’s in the flowers for him.
And syrphid flies can’t scare me. They look beelike, and act beelike, and there’s so many kinds of them, I’m always leaning closer to see.
Naturally, it would take an awful lot of honeybees to scare me. They don’t mind leaving and coming back, just so long as they can keep dancing all over the fading flowers. It’s party time out there! Starting tomorrow, the fall dance will keep right on going.
Writing Every Day 