I Bee-lieve

I was gardening a lot this week and had a great opportunity to spend some time with bees. I working in one of my raised beds, extremely close to the blossoming sage. The perfect purple blossoms were being plundered as I worked. This was the longest period of time I have ever spent around bees and was keen to watch them on their quest to collect and distribute pollen. Since I was not making a move toward them in any way, they were completely ignoring me. This is something I could not say about the yellow jacket who kept showing up to nose around me, making me intensely nervous.

The last time I got stung was by a yellow jacket was in the privacy of my own bathroom. And in an intensely private place. I was doing my usual bathroom business, as one does, on the throne when I realized that something didn't feel quite right. I reached down to check and -- yikes! My hand came away with a yellow jacket perched upon it, but not before he had given me what for in the nether regions. Talk about freaking out! I threw the offensive little creature into the toilet and flushed. Then cleaned and bathed the painful area repeatedly.

Needless to say (but I'm gonna say it anyway) it was a little touchy trying to sit down at work for the next few days. I had to tell my coworkers what had happened so that they would understand the strange little dance I was doing trying to sit comfortably. Who ever heard of getting stung in the. . .?

The last time I was actually stung by a bee was several years ago. We had had an unseasonably warm autumn and I was out cleaning up leaves and such on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I woke up a bee that had been snoozing in a warm fold of a plastic garbage bag. I didn't notice him until he got me on the wrist. Who ever heard of getting stung in November?

My conversation with the gentle bees came, by chance, on the same day as the Colorado Rockies baseball game was interrupted by the sudden appearance of two swarms of bees that sent players, photographers, and cameramen scrambling.A beekeeper came and vacuumed them all up with his bee vac.

It must just have bee-n one of those unbee-lievable days!