LIVING TOGETHER

I watched my little bee break out of its cocoon today. I was surprised at how proud I felt over her success. The male hatched out while I wasn’t looking, but I did see him for a few minutes. Man, are they fast! When he left I could hardly tell which direction he went.

You probably didn’t know that bees have cocoons. Most folks think all bees are honey bees, the kind that live in hives and make honey. (Do honey bees “make” honey, or do they “gather” it? Technically, honey is nectar from plants, so bees simpy gather it. Of course it is changed while in the bee’s stomach and then stored in the hive, so I guess they make it also.)

But my little pet bee that hatched out today is what is sometimes called a solitary bee because each female bee builds a single nest, deposits her off-spring with provisions and then dies. She works alone. I like to call them native bees because they were the only bees on the American continent until the early pilgrims brought the honey bee with them. Specifically this little bee that hatched out of its cocoon today in mid-March is named Osmia lignaria by the scientific community. Others call it the Blue Orchard Bee, or the Mason Bee.

She’s a cute little bee that doesn’t look much like a honey bee. To begin with she is black, or a very dark blue if the light is just right. She is also smaller than a honey bee, probably about a quarter of an inch or a little more in length. Somehow she is endearing in a way I didn’t expect. I can’t quite exxplain it, but she was just cute in a way that I had never thought about a honey bee. She sat for a few minutes, groomed some stray hairs, walked a few paces, defecated following her long winter in the cocoon, sat in the sun for a few minutes, and then, in a flash, was gone also.

We had lived together all winter now. I got my bees last fall and have been carefully storing them, first outside, then in a refrigerator all winter. I hope to release them this spring, let them pollinate some orchards and then collect their babies for release the next year. I guess it is sort of free-range bee ranching, but without the branding and roundup necessary in running cattle.

I have been fascinated by things “living together” since my senior year in college when I took a course in Parasitology, the study of parasites. I know that sounds gross, but I found the concept of things living cooperating and adapting to live together especially fascinating.

In fact, every animal ever examined has at least one specific animal that lives exclusively in, or on, the host. In addition every animal examined shares some collection of animals that live in, or on, it with some other species. Inescapably then, there are more “parasites” than free living animals in the world. The term for these co-dependent creatures is “symbionts”, and most symbionts do not cause disease or in anyway harm their hosts. Many benefit their hosts and are in turn benefitted.

Bees aren’t parasites. But they are symbionts. Their entire lives are entertwined with the flowering plants that provide them both pollen and nectar. But in turn the flowering plants are entirely dependent on the bees to provide the very intimate service of reproduction. Or maybe flowers are the symbionts of the bees? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

But in turn, this mutual intimate relationship between insects and flowers benefits humans with the very world in which we live. About eighty or ninty percent of all flowering plants are pollinated by animals. There are about 200,000 animal pollinators in the world, and the great majority are insect. And the most successful insect pollinators are bees. The world as we know it simply ceases to exist without pollinators.

So in yet another sense I have been living with my little Blue Orchard Bee much longer than just the past winter. I have been living with bees all my life. In fact, I owe my very existence, at least as it now exists, to the birds and the bees.

And that’s why I have my little bees. If I can create a home for these little creatures, I create a little earth for me. When I tend the bees, they attend to my needs by providing sweet fruit, healthy vegetables, new seeds and beautiful flowers. And maybe by building a better world for myself, I also create a better garden for my neighbor’s, more flowers for my community, and just a better world for my world. Not a bad deal. And I got to watch my little bee hatch this morning, on top of it all.