By ‘Reese Bourdeau
I was just enjoying my Thursday evening meal of 99 cent tacos on the sunny front porch when I noticed a flurry of activity in the corner. At first I thought it was just a shadow of a butterfly or small bird and then I saw a tiny hole about the size of a pinhead on the front post.
Over the next few minutes I observed one after another tiny bee sort of winged wonder arriving, turning about and backing in. Then a couple of seconds later it would zip fly out and take off into the air.
I have had some training observing the micro creature adventures happening around us. Barbara Dussel, a friend from Klamath, taught me how to find kitty whiskers in your house. No, I didn’t say cat fur or projected hairballs. I mean the tiny, bristly and very magical shed whisker. After she first showed me her little arrangement of them in a dollhouse-size vase I was hooked. Some were black, some cream color and one especially rare one was dark gray with an almost white tip. (I now have two gray cats, Kleo Katra a short hair Burmese with long, thin, slate whiskers and Luna, just as her name hints, a pudgy, round faced Persian with a couple of those gray and cream rarities.
I have bagged exactly two whiskers in about a decade and consider myself lucky for that. One was by the edge of our sofa when we were living in Klamath and one from my past beloved cat, Bailey’s Irish Cream, here in Stayton, looked a bit loose so I helped it out. The cat made no alarming sounds nor tattooed my arm so I’m pretty sure it WAS loose . . hanging by a . .!
And here he is again. Hmmm . . are you a good bee or a bad bee? Are you fertilizing my early fall raspberries? Are you eating the wood inside that POST? It just so happens to be holding up the corner of my covered porch that I’d really like to enjoy for at least a few more years. Then possibly the most important question is; do YOU sting?
Armed with those questions (and a dose of curiosity) I came into the house for my camera. An hour later, almost dusk, I finally had captured one fellow entering but couldn’t get the take off with my simple point-and-hope camera.
Now I don’t have a bee identification book, as I do for the birds that frequent my yard, but I do have another friend, Paul Moore, who should be named the “bee whisperer.” He will tell you that not only do hives (and he knows because he has been caretaker of several and helps others start their own) offer honey, aromatic wax and pollenization, but that the bees get to know you if you’re their keeper. He says they communicate by how they move and sound (with their tiny wings) and will even come to greet you (sometimes in the house) where he has to protect THEM from non-politically-bee-correct human folk.
It seems the response to an active bee inquiry (unless you’re allergic and don’t have your epée pen) is to relax, calm your breath and gently back away. He laughs as he relates that most people do the opposite. Panic, open their mouth to protest, swat with their arms and are more likely to ingest a bee that gets sucked into their mouth.
The identification of this bee colony is still pending and I’m not sure what their fate will be if they don’t pass the “good bee” test because the male, Tim, that less frequently frequents the house is neither curious, patient or likely to bee kind!
