Monday 11 April 2016

Yay!

I saved a bee!  (No, not that bee but isn't he cute?)

I did, I saved a bee!  And I'm pretty happy about it.

Friday evening, I noticed a bee sitting on my bug screen.  I figured he was tired (as they don't usually stay still in that way for that long) or maybe unwell but figured he'd be gone in the morning.

But he wasn't.  And I felt pretty guilty as I'd put out some sugar water mixed with a natural ant poison (because, yes, the ants are still vaguely around...sigh) and I was really upset that I might have attracted the bee with the sugar water and then potentially killed him with the poison.  (I maybe got a little weepy over this thought.)  I tapped the bug screen to see if he was alive as sometimes animals can get kind of stuck when they die (by animals, I mean flying bug type things I suppose... very very small animals!) and he moved a little so I knew he was still with me, if in not very good shape.

So I went and got some honey and watered it down a bit in a spoon and held it up to the screen.  I didn't want to tip the honey water all over him so I kind of did my best to get it near him and then poured it carefully so it dripped into the screen near him.  And I pushed it gently towards his proboscis (tongue thing) and I waited...

And before too long it was as if he could smell it and he moved himself a little and started to drink (eat, taste, ingest, I don't know!) 

I was going out for brunch that morning (and would have made myself late if he hadn't started to eat [I was planning on moving him carefully and leaving him a puddle of honey water if he didn't get to it himself, but didn't want to touch him if I didn't have to]) and left him hopefully recovering (I was still worried the poison would be too much for him, damn ants.)

And man oh man was I happy to get home and see him gone!  Flown away!  Hopefully fully recovered and maybe just tired in the first place.  (Maybe he didn't get into the bad stuff and had just landed there to rest)

So yeah.  I saved a bee, because they really really need it, and because I might have accidentally hurt this one, and because, well it's the right thing to do for our little bee buddies.

Fly on little friend, fly on and pollinate away!

3 comments:

Elliott said...

I saw an article last week that if you see a honey bee on the ground or sitting somewhere and not moving it's likely because it needs sugar water. So you likely did save it by giving it the energy it needed.

*round of applause*

Jason Langlois said...

Now we'll see if the next time you check, there's like a hundred of them begging for sugar water...

But awesome job!

Victoria said...

Yay! I done good! Thanks E *takes a bow*

So far so good Jason ;) (But that put a really cute image in my head!)