Morning Buzz

Two honeybees graze on a poppy in a warmer season

As I continue to marvel at the slow decent into colder temperatures which has me still gardening in practically summertime garb - as still is the case on this cloudy day - today I noticed a very dramatic change in the overall look to the landscape.  Suddenly, overnight, it looks more like the November it truly is.  The golden light in the woods has morphed to brown.  Beech leaves have given up on their bright color; their moment on the stage of fall over. The driveway is covered with oak leaves that fell overnight.  On a walk today, the leaves drifted down to the roadways, landing with a soft tap without much air movement to encourage them.  It is time.

Yesterday, which now seems like another season,  a little moment in the early morning inspired a few thoughts.  I let our very old, mostly blind dog out the back door, his second outing of the day, but I did not totally "suit up" for going outside.   I stood on the pathway from our back door in my "indoor" shoes, monitoring his meanderings, noticing once again that the English holly shrubs continue to show tiny flowers as well as bright red berries and yet-unripe green ones.  Yet another sign of the long fall that seems in no hurry to be off.  Also I was contemplating a comment said the day before that made me very sad - but one that bolstered my resolve at the same time.  The suggestion was that gardening - non-specific but since the meeting was mostly about flower gardening, that is how I interpreted it - is on the decline in the same way that cooking as an endeavor was several years ago.  In my mind I was revisiting my hope - and a motivating force - that gardening for pollinators will be the next big thing when I became aware of a noise that sounded like a bee's buzzing.  As a beekeeper, that noise is an attention-getter.  Next thought - oh, only traffic on Route 1, less than a mile away.  But then I saw a honeybee eyeing my tea mug, held at waist height.  What?  Traditional lore says that honeybees don't fly at less than 50 degrees, and usually wait until later on in the morning to make an appearance.  It was 7:30 AM and about 48 out.  Not to mention November 9.

The bee hovered and gave the mug a good inspection before landing on the edge and walking down the inside.  I saw her extend her tiny tongue and work over the surface getting ever closer to the liquid. This was going to be interesting, I thought.  Hardly had the thought formed when her close approach to the tea evidently warned her about the temperature. Up and out she flew.  What mission was she on?  Why so early?  What energy source was warming her flight?  How and why was she attracted to my mug of tea?  MY mug?  The mysteries of beekeeping....

If truth be known, I did glance at our three hives and did notice more than a random few bees flying from one of the hives that was more in the sun even at this early hour.  As a beekeeper, you learn that extended periods of warm temperatures are actually bad for bees in the fall.  It keeps them more active than they would be normally,  and eating up their stores that need to last all winter.  There are no more sources of nectar to refill the larder.  But, given to pondering the season, the gardening question, and with a tendency to go a bit beyond the face value of this little morning moment, I couldn't help but think that this honeybee had a message.  

She is unique in our biome, an insect that overwinters with thousands of her kind, cloistered in a box, eating honey that she and her sisters, mostly now deceased, made from hundreds of thousands of foraging forays during the preceding weeks and months.  Most native bees exist now in forms that will emerge only next spring.   So now the honeybee is the only available flighted messenger.  She was reminding me again of the importance of her existence and by transitivity that of all pollinators.  Yes, that is the right idea, she seemed to be reminding me. Garden for us, the pollinators!

That was what the buzzing was about so early in the morning.

Honeybee forages on a bachelor's button flower