Mice + Others
No, no mice here … Native stingless bees collecting resin from fresh cut pine trees at the meditation meetup place.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Industrious little creatures, oblivious to the danger of this particular service to the hive. Deadly sticky building material.
Not here to socialise, collecting little bags of resin on their legs, where they would normally put pollen if collecting food.
Time enough for essential grooming, keeping those antennae in top condition, to ensure a safe return home perhaps.
A little overzealous maybe, or over-ambitious, grappling with a ball of resin too big and heavy to lift, bright enough to dazzle.
And then there’s the risk, the danger mentioned, of stepping on a watery patch and sinking in. A final service of life, to life.
What happens when you over-reach, if a little native bee. The early flow of resin too much to manage and under you go. That’s life …
We have a neighbour who built a chicken house then went away for two weeks with the chicken’s food on auto.
By the time he came back the rats from all around had moved in under his shed and had many babies.
These well fed babies grew up and crowded the original nest so they moved out, and moved in.
Into my place, well almost. And that’s when I got good at setting the rat traps.
Caught so many and relocated them to the remnant rainforest up the road.
But I never did enjoy this removals business, it was just a reflex action.
Something learned long ago, that rats need to be seriously dealt with.
Probably from plague times when rats were synonymous with death.
But it’s no longer so, they can be left alone to live their lives.
Old brain programs should be regularly updated.
Belief of any thing or one would be discarded.
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Oh right, the mice. Well, they turned up a few days ago and I caught a few in traps laid for the rats. So easy to catch for some reason. They are not very cunning creatures, one may have come back to the same trap three times in the same day. Or there are that many of them now, a plague perhaps.
Anyway, I couldn’t go on relocating the little creatures knowing the space they took would surely soon be taken by more of the same.
And their lives would be shattered for no good. So why utterly disrupt their little lives, for an out of date brain program.
It’s the sense of innocence about them that can’t be ignored. They can look after themselves, things will work out.
If they get into the house … that’s a separate matter.
Life goes on …
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Nature's Place 
As you know nature can be relentless and it often makes sense to just go with the flow. This post reminded me of pieces of prehistoric amber with trapped insects one can buy. Maybe thousands of millennia from now this bee will be for sale on on the equivalent of eBay, assuming the human race is still around. :) Wonderful photos as always.
Nature is unstoppable but it’s not so much about going with the flow, more a change in understanding, by negating the momentum of the old program. Re-thinking for different times. It’s the sensible thing to do, not to interfere where it’s not necessary or fruitful.
Thanks David.
I also think that some things no longer apply.
Those were different times then.
Understanding the resin in its outflow behavior apparently did not work for some specimens.
I suspect the hive mind is a blunt instrument, ‘go get resin’. With enough individuals at the coal face the job gets done in spite of casualties.
That doesn’t seem to match the high functional intelligence that you and I attribute to insects, does it ?!
It’s relative, isn’t it. Hive mind has individuals to spare, and has never known it any other way. Hive creatures do things solitary creatures wouldn’t. You wouldn’t see solitary bees taking the risks these little ones take, dying in the same numbers in resin that’s too wet to carry. It’s relative to survival values.
Yes i See your point.
When a (hive) mind has expendable bodies it will tend to do that, expend. Similar to what generals do with soldiers in a war. This expendability tends to engender thinking/intelligence to match, in my view. When there’s only one body (soldier) for a mind (general) it will function differently, more intelligently because survival depends on the integrity of every action. You know, when you only have one soldier to do a job you tend to treat it differently to when you have more than one.
I wouldn’t say high functioning either, as in self aware. Functioning is (higher or lower) according to the needs of the form and circumstance, instinctively. Though the earth is surely big enough to accommodate the exception.
Or something …
The cycle of life and all the interconnections, always as it is…thanks for sharing your wonderful work Mark!
Thanks Dee, a pleasure.