Bee Mine

If you haven’t seen this video yet, it’s a bee-youtiful story. ❤

When Fiona Presly found an injured bee in her garden, she took her in and helped her live out her life. The bond that she and “Queen Bee” developed —  so soulful!

Here’s a link to where you can learn more about saving bees.

And here’s another story, from Scotland (where Fiona lives) on her Bee friend.

It’s amazing to me how scientists are “scratching their heads” – can’t they see and feel our interconnectedness, the intelligence in all things, and know we can communicate?

Sigh . . .

— SK

 

 

In the Spring a Not-So-Young Woman’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Bees

Apiary in the Village Varatic, 1980s. By Ion Chibzii from Chisinau. , Moldova. Via Wikimedia Commons

 

A Facebook friend’s post this week told how a large honeybee swarm had  taken up residence in an empty hive on his property. All on its own! He’d left the hive out all winter, “seasoning it with lemon grass every month,” (rubbing lemon grass into the wood), and the day before saw a scout bee checking it out. The next day—a colony moved in! Free bees!

How incredibly exciting! I thought.

I’ve been dreaming of beekeeping for years here on my city property, but I’ve never made the move from dream to reality. Two neighbors on my block have given it a try. One had a hive for a couple of years, and a new neighbor across the street has a hive, or she did last summer. I’ve taken classes, and one year was thrilled to participate in a swarm capture, but I’ve always been just a little too wrapped up in other projects to take on yet another responsibility. (I would want to do right by the bees, you know!) I do take a lot of pleasure, though, in growing two big city lots full of plants that produce great bee forage flowers: lots of catmint, blue mist spirea, and borage, in addition to flowering trees and shrubs, vegetables, flowers, weeds, etc. We also provide water in a few birdbaths and a pond. The bees love to drink from the lily pads.

And every year I think—hmmm, maybe next year.

This year’s musings were ignited first by the beekeeper, then by Pinterest, which sent me some suggested pins that included honeybee art. That took me to Etsy, and that took me to Wikimedia Commons, my favorite place for copyright-free antique images.

There I found a few more images I hope you’ll enjoy.

Bee well, and remember to love and care for our friends the honeybees!

—Sandra Knauf

Just one of many Etsy offerings of bee-you-tiful digital images. These are available at the shop Digital Magpie.

 

I would love to have a room wallpapered with this. From British Bees: An Introduction to the Study of the Natural History and Economy of the Bees Indigenous to the British Isles, by W.E. Shuckard. Published 1866. Via Wikimedia Commons.

 

From How to Keep Bees for Profit, by Anna Botsford Comstock, 1905. I learned that Comstock was a well-known  American artist, educator, conservationist, and leader of the nature study movement!

Note the bees on his arm, a little stunt that beekeepers can have fun with. From How to Keep Bees for Profit.

 

Another image, this one very lovely, from Anna Botsford Comstock’s book.

From The American Bee Journal, 1916. The accompanying excerpt about women studying beekeeping looked promising, but soon I became very annoyed at the  condescending stance on women’s most important role in society: homemaking. “Their sisters may paint beautiful pictures, write wonderful stories or rise to exalted positions in business or the professions; but the home builder is, after all, the greatest producer of beauty and happiness.”

 

And, to end this post, a pretty color illustration from The Home and School Reference Work, Volume 1, 1917.

 

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Bug Heaven—A Visit to May Museum

 

Here’s the famous Hercules beetle, showing that you are very close to Bug Heaven. (Image from Legends of America website.)

 

I guess it’s “nostalgic summer” here on the blog. Again I’m going back in time to share something sweet. I read this on the air some years back at our local NPR affiliate station, KRCC. The museum’s still here and now I want to go back.

—Sandra Knauf

Bug Heaven

I was thrilled to learn this summer that my seven-year-old nephew, Sean, is into bugs. You see, I have two daughters who did not inherit my “creepy crawlie things ‘r’ fun” gene. While we’ve shared a few adventures, my girls generally wince at earwigs, shudder at spiders, and, well, they just don’t get me.

Sean recently brought over his latest acquisition, a pet slug. “I found it under a rock yesterday.”

I was relieved the mollusk was small, alarmed to see it resided in a tin, on a bed of grass. “Let’s get it some lettuce. And mist it,” I said. “They like it cool and wet.”

The slug still looked overly sluggish after our efforts and I made an unfortunate remark, “Sean, I’m afraid he might be visiting slug heaven really soon.”

Sean didn’t take my comment well.

To make amends, I proposed an adventure, “Want to go to a bug museum?”

Within the hour we turned off Hwy. 115 at a 10-foot-tall Hercules beetle. We headed down the dirt road to the May Museum of Natural History, a place I’d been longing to visit for years. Now, finally, I’d found someone to join me!

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d studied museum and art gallery work in college, even interned at a local history museum, twice, and I knew museums could vary from roadside trailer to Guggenheim. What we found was a charming 1940’s adobe building. Past the gift shop was a large exhibit room filled with display cases holding approximately 8,000 invertebrates, about 1/10th of what is considered to be one of the world’s most outstanding collections. Nothing high tech, no slick design, no interactive games for the kiddies, just glass cases, much like you’d imagine in a Victorian library or a curiosity shop, filled with treasures collected mostly from the tropics. The odd combination of science and antiquities quickened my pulse and made me fantasize about my perfect home library/natural history room. (The fantasy includes a replica of a human skeleton, glass cases with insect specimens, a mineral case, red leather furniture, and twelve-foot walls filled with books, floor to ceiling.)

I didn’t even attempt to stay with Sean. He fluttered randomly about the room, much like one of the tropical insects, saying things like, “Wow, this tarantula eats birds!” “There’s a HUGE fruit bat!” Though excited, I moved in an orderly line, much like an aunt (pun intended) trying to absorb the contents of each case. We saw: Columbian beetles so large that, in flight, they can break street lights and knock down men; giant locusts with rainbow-hued wings; huge Brazilian butterflies in metallic greens and blues; a stick insect 17 inches long; and leaf insects of Borneo and Madagascar that are replicas of the leaves of the trees they rest on. I found myself not in a museum so much as an unusual temple devoted to evolution and beauty! The art before my eyes mocked anything man could ever hope to create—transparent butterflies lovelier than stained glass; gold and silver beetles that would make a Tiffany silversmith weep.

 

The wonderfulness of May Museum (image from Pikes Peak County attractions website).

 

I wanted to hug each and every case.

In the gift shop I asked about the fall closing date, October 1st, and said, “I’ve really got to come back one more time before then.”

“Can I come too?” asked Sean.

I smiled. Boys could be so fun! “Of course.”

Back at the house, we found that the slug had succumbed, another reminder of how man’s efforts at species domination can fail so easily. We gave the slug a burial in the flower garden, saddened, but also solaced by our very own glimpse of Bug Heaven.

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