Chaotic Utopia

Let’s finish this weekend of red, orange, and yellow, with some flowers for Mom. And a honeybee. The blossoms are more pink than red, but the bee definitely has the orange/yellow look going for it.

Moms like bees, right? Consider this: if it wasn’t for the bees, fertilizing everything from almond and cherry trees to rose blossoms, Mother’s Day gifts would be pretty lame--no flower bouquets, no boxes of fancy filled chocolates. See? Moms love bees... at least indirectly.

So, here are some flowers for Mom... with a bee:

Honeybee Pollinating a Prairie Fire Crabapple Blossom

Personally (whether or not it has anything to do with my being a mother) I’m pretty happy to see honeybees around. Last week, there was a healthy swarm of bees darting around all the local crabapple trees. They didn’t mind me sneaking up to take this photo. Instead, they were busy collecting and distributing pollen--just like I’d hoped they would. If our local honeybee colonies succumb to CCD, these poor trees, along with their gifts of blossom and fruit, won’t stand a chance.

Maybe one of the best presents you can give to any mom is to lend a hand to the honeybees. It might be easier than you think. BackyardHive.com sells, not surprisingly, hives for the backyard. The simple setup is supposed to be inexpensive and low maintenance. The top-loading feature of the hive produces less honey than the sort used in commercial setups, but it is less invasive to both the bees and the beekeeper. In other words, this one is designed for the amateur hobbyist.

Even if you don’t plan to set up your own hive in your backyard (or if Mom isn’t too keen on having one set up in her yard) BackYardHive is still an interesting read. For instance, take this article from a first-time bee wrangler, Will Dart:

At the house a young boy told me the swarm was still there, in a tree around back. He asked me if I was going to trap it and take it away. Sure, I said. I smiled and tried to sound professional and confident. We both looked at each other; then he went back inside. I walked around the back of the house, and saw the swarm about eight or nine feet up a tree that was partly hanging over a fence, on the other side of which was a sidewalk and a road. I went back to my car and drove around and parked on the road next to the tree, then got out and inspected the swarm more closely. It was about the size of a grapefruit, but slightly elongated, a mess of bees tightly packed together, with a hundred or more bees buzzing right around it. I put on my bee-keeping suit, duct-taped the my pants to my boots, tucked the mosquito netting firmly into my raincoat, set up the ladder next to the tree, and...stood there. I could hear the buzzing of the bees, and my heart beating, and I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. What happened if they attacked me and my "suit" didn’t turn out to be bee-tight? Wouldn’t I look like an idiot, running down the street in my amateur bee suit, screaming and smacking myself in the face? I decided I couldn’t worry about that. I calmed myself down, and after a few minutes managed to get into a nice quiet bee-friendly state (I sent them gentle telepathic waves assuring them I was a harmless person, more or less insect-loving, who was only there to give them a good home). Then I climbed slowly up the ladder. The closer I got to the swarm the louder the buzzing was, but the bees did not seem to take any notice of me, even when I was only a couple feet away. The buzzing was beautiful, and hypnotic, and, in itself, calming. I went back down the ladder and got my box.

Click here to read the rest. It sounds like quite an experience. However, I doubt I’ll order a beehive for my mom, just yet. (I should probably wait until I have a yard large enough to set up my own.) For now, I’ll just send her some flowers and think of the bees.

Happy Mother’s Day!