Backyard and Beyond

Yesterday, I came upon the first honeybees I’ve seen this year. They were working the ornamental cherries at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. One landed on my shirt. Remember, bees are not aggressive unless you go after them, or their hive. So don’t panic. Close your eyes and think of England if you’re afraid… but you shouldn’t be. I just let her crawl around me for a bit before she was satisfied my linen was long past its flowering stage. Note those pollen bundles on her rear legs. She packs pollen — and a perhaps a little regurgitated honey to moisten it — into these little bundles which she sticks on her pollen baskets, or corbicula. The pollen, which collects on her hairs via static, is combed together before packing. Some of it nonetheless gets transfered to other flowers, of course, and thus the bee is a little vector of plant genetics, or, as the poets would have it — and where better to be a poet then under a flowering cherry tree in the spring? — a messenger of love…