Bee-haviour
Sealing the entrance – When all else is done.
A little pollen might help – Sure won’t harm.
Feasting Bee – Unseen injury.
Wasp – Robbing the life of a bee – What they do.
Young one – The new born often turn to see whence they come – Reflection?
A case of mistaken identity? She seemed to think so.
Alone at last.
When all else is done, sleep and die at home on a leaf.
Let go, let go … I saw it first.
Under the veranda at front of the house is where I keep some tools and do much of my preparations for the garden. It’s also where I hang the few bee hotels, wooden posts about 8″ diameter x a few feet long drilled to accommodate any creature so inclined to nest – not just bees. So I am around the comings and goings of the dominant native bee, the Orange Tail Resin Bee, as she makes her nests, is born again, mates and dies.
I have noticed in the last bee-busy week a few weakened bees on the floor – or in a tray I have placed to catch any fallen ones. These bees are unable to fly it seems, so I gather them up and give them every chance to get things together. I present them with water, pollen (in a picked flower), put them in sun or shade and let them climb as high as they can to launch from. I usually end up putting them in one of the plant pots they can explore on the way to being a bee. They may never fly but they don’t die hungry in the dust on hard concrete.
Some are small enough to be new born and others are big enough to be mature. I suspect the young ones may be damaged by something while in the nest, maybe the parasitising Ichneumon Wasp, or other such wasps that can be seen visiting these hotels. The bigger ones are probably females worn out by the constant work of breeding and nest making and all the preparations that go into it. It’s a lot she has to do when the male only has to ambush her – not known as charming man, but driven.
I saw this slow flying mass wandering above the garden the other day and thought it one of those big cumbersome beetles. When it landed and I got close I could see it was two bees mating, or he was trying to mate and ‘she’ scratching at him – didn’t look too successful to me. Eventually he gave up and the other, she I presume, took a good grip of a leaf and rested a while – which was a boon to me.
While back at the nests she was busy filling and sealing the entrance, then off she went again.
Until the next cycle … of birth and death, and everything in between.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Smiley …
Did you know a spider smiles? Yes, somewhere, inside, below the surface appearance every spider smiles instinctively, psychically.
They smile because that is the natural state of things when there is no problem. And a spider never has a problem because a spider doesn’t think and get emotional.
Maybe they are on to something there, instinctively. Something we the people can perhaps learn from. Though we think, and it seems often too much, we can get back to the perfect instinct.
The instinct that allows no unnecessary thought and right action in the moment, and starts with the simple pure sensation inside, the tingling or pressure in every part of every body.
We only have to relearn it. After all we were once instinctive creatures, just like the spider and the fly. And it begins with attention to …
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Did you know every insect meditates? Yes, every fly, bee or bug … Except in flight from the spider.
And, in death, there is just no more need – for the insects, or we the people.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Knock, Knock …
‘Who’s there?’
It’s me, Bug …
‘Bug who?’
Buggg, your old mate.
‘Well, come on up old mate …’
G’day fly, me old mate. Howzit goin?
‘Hang on! You’re Ahhgggsassin bug. Bugoff!’
Aww come on, I’m only a little hungry on this cold night.
‘Buzzzz, bzzz, bzz – now where am I going to land, on this bloody …’
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The night is a bloody experience for many a bug. Some cop it, and some are copped – oops!
We are lucky, having come far from our savage nature. Or are we, did we …
Did we just mask the real for the convenient and safe – ish …
To have it stripped by consequences inevitable.
And it all comes from within.
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On that hill there …
What is it?
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Well, what is it disturbs in the quiet of night?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Prayer …
Everything prays. Prayer works.
Careful what you pray …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Life In The Green
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Carrying a can of water down the bare earth path between the giant ferns at the corner of the house, leaves high on both sides, I sensed movement as a Praying Mantis came into view. I stopped to look, eye to eye, and offered a finger which she mounted and I carried her over to the other giant fern leaf.
She took a few strides into the dark green jungle before she swivelled her big eyed head back at me and said in her sharp clickity little voice “Thanks Mark.”
‘No problem’, said I. But no, I didn’t have my camera handy. It wasn’t one of those encounters. Was and wasn’t …
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This might have been one, or two, of her many babies that appeared a couple weeks ago on the deck.
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The flowers are coming along nicely, drinking a lot of water in their skyward stretch, a lot of leg work too – my legs. Hand watering a big-ish garden is a good way to get to know what’s going on in the greenery. Notably, not a lot – as I recall last year same time.
The Carpenter Bee is still coming and going, a few bees are visiting – but not to the hotels at all, lots of little green plant bugs, some flies and the occasional spider.
He must have dropped in fully grown – climbed a tall tree, probably saw my bright yellow patch that instinctively registered ‘food’ and cast a strand to the wind in search of direction to pastures new. He’s a beauty, gentle faced and quiet of nature, a flower or ambush spider – consummate predator.
They often take on the colouring of their surrounds, camouflage to better hunt the visiting insects, collectors of pollen and drinkers of nectar – good in evading other hunters too.
Morning is best time to catch a meal on a flower. An unlucky bee, early to the feast, lucky spider, and green bug snacks.
And just for the show …
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Pausing every now and again, just to sense what is the nature now. Blue sky, trees blowing in the wind, Galah’s ripping up the seed pods of the African Tulip, smell of the wet earth, colour, sound, form – a simple pleasure. Feeding the winged visitors at days end.
Doves, Indian Mynahs, the Butcherbird and Pied Magpie. All with young ones to feed and be taught to fend for themselves, take a bit of bread in the late afternoon. You can see the teaching going on, the way things are.
The only one I could get of him today. Others lost in a broken computer.
When the cat, Djinn, shows himself, what a commotion from the screeching Mynahs. He just sits unmoved, on the edge of stressed, so long as they can’t actually get at him.
In sense, instinctively …
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Nature's Place 
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