Our Beautiful Blue Banded Bee
Anyone who has been following my posts on this site will know I have worked at making the garden a place for the little ones to visit, maybe even stay and nest. You will know the endeavour has been somewhat successful, weather permitting.
The other day I went about clearing away a years fallen palm leaves and on the way got to see places I don’t usually go. At one of those places, coming to dusk, I came upon a band of bees hovering, landing, taking of and doing it over and over – as BBB’s (and others) do.
So I sat and watched a while and – it came to pass – the place is a nest of males, where they rest out the night. I had seen females looking for suitable nest sites during the day. I have only so far seen this roosting behaviour in the fields by the rain-forest remnant – and was pleased to see it around the house, indeed.
After enough of the dark hours had passed and the bees were well enough asleep I went to see what could be done to get a few pix – which can be a disturbing affair, to the bees, and myself – because it often involves some disturbance of the environment they roost and in the prevailing climate they are warm enough to fly even though they can’t see to well in the dark.
And this is what happened. I was in position with various bits and pieces (necessary for night shooting) and had slipped some BG material in place to better show the bees off and one was spooked and flew off, then another. I kept track as much as possible and found one that has settled on some nearby dead banana tree stem – which I leave in place to break-down to form habitat and eventually humus – got a shot or two and left it in place.
I lost track of the other that was disturbed and just trusted it didn’t lose itself in the undergrowth and would be ok come morning and go about its little life – I’ll never really know. But when I finished and went back towards the house I heard this buzzing noise I usually only hear when I am close to a bee. And there was the second one, buzzing up to the exposed light-bulb – it had hitched a ride on my clothes.
I got a glass and a cap for it; improvised from available material I leave about, and set about capturing the little bee. It wasn’t too difficult, you just have to be careful not to injure it when slipping the cap on and containing it. When that was done I brought it back to the spot I had disturbed it from – a place that gets the early morning sun – and set it up so it would live out the night and even make its way back to it’s roosting mates.
And it all seemed to work out fine. The bee climbed out of the containing glass by the thin stick I left jutting out of it and leaning against a taller stem – its preferred roost – and it climbed and went back to sleep. I don’t tag them, obviously, but I trust he lived to work another day and maybe even learned something from the experience – don’t go flying at night, it’s only a photographer when the flash goes off. :)
And one I held a leaf behind for the BG.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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The Wet
Well, no sooner than I have said how dry it is here the rain comes. And it poured floods up and down the East coast. Fortunately where I am is protected from the worst of it, barring high winds – falling trees, ravaged gardens, big clean up and the heat/humidity.
Some are saying these extremes are here to stay and I am either at home with it or move on from it, remains to be seen – it doesn’t get easier. It was a cyclone that hit the coast a few days ago and the next day there were more bees about than I have ever seen, and of kinds I have never seen before.
People and all sorts of creatures were made homeless, and then it all sorted itself out, as it does. I am at least pleased the little ones had food for the duration, and the shelter a wild garden provides as habitat. And pleased for the opportunity to see so much I wouldn’t otherwise have done.
I have since noticed there is a gang of male Blue Banded Bees that roost in the back garden, up against the fence, on the dried out stems of Star Jasmine – the same the small native wasps like to hang their nests from. Also, while clearing up I disturbed a Carpenter Bee that had made its home in a dried out stick I used to support plants. When I noticed it flying around the spot the stick used to be I put the stick back, today the Carpenter is also back.
It seems such extremes are approaching, in time and event; there will soon be no option but to move on – one way or another. I could do with new pastures anyway, the old being so worn …
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The Dry
Drought is no stranger in Oz and it is back with a vengeance. While we usually have the wet season about now it has drizzled and gently rained on a few days out of the last few months and it isn’t looking like getting wet any time soon. The bees, and everything else, are dying for the rain, the monsoon that brings more life than death.
This has significant implications for the wildlife, water being the first requirement of sustainability. But everything gets through, adapts or moves on. As it happens there is one spot that will probably never really dry up as it is an integral part of the drainage system of one of our big shopping centres that flood water from the inland hills must pass through – it was once a part of the natural system that was built over but maintained.
There is always an upside, as far as I am concerned, it’s how I keep going through the brutality of a war zone society often looks to be – and actually is. Yeah, let’s not go into that – you see it or you don’t and that’s enough. Nature is also a war zone, but there’s nobody to suffer emotionally – is there another kind – from it. Optimism has no place but with the pessimist.
So I tend the garden, more of a haven for the little ones this year than last. Some surprises – a new born Emerald Cuckoo Wasp, and some amusement – the bum of a bee sticking up out of a bamboo, looking like it doesn’t realise. And one giant wasp and mate that make good use of some water I leave out – must be over 2” inch long and thick as my little finger – that is well aware of me and to whom I haven’t gotten close, yet – we’ll see. You get the pix I get …
What a shocker nature can be, to the insanity of the emotional thinker, if it can but see … what a wonder, in a sense of the whole where the particular retreats to perspective … and it only lasts the blink of an eye.
The rest is just living; no big deal except it keeps going somehow – by the same singular purpose.
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New Year?
Not for this little fellow. Probably because he was shot on Xmas day, and it was raining. It is still 2012,yes??? Had to check.
What’s this obsession with the marking of time, easter, birthdays, holidays, xmas and now new year? Or is it just a distraction from time, psychological time.
Is it just a political and economic opportunity? Or has that just usurped the natural people’s celebration of the passing of the seasons. Because make no mistake, the pollies and business-men only have their own best interests at heart – with the occasional exception, there’s always an exception to make the rule.
Anyway, given the obscenity and sentimentality of modern celebrations I give them a miss. I would rather be writing this, or shooting pix in the field or garden, but certainly not getting inebriated with so-called friends who are gone tomorrow when the headaches set in.
Inebriated on my own, now that may be, and everything else out of mind? Feet up and watching a no ads TV program or movie of a night. :)
And now and again going and having a look at what the new night may have brought, moths, spiders, and all …
Anyway, I trust you still enjoy the pix, and sometimes the words that go with them.
All the best …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Maternal Instinct
The bee hotel referred to in the last post is actually a maternity ward. There are now eight or nine holes filled by the Orange Tailed Bees with eggs and what they need when they hatch. I have also seen the bees dig out the holes after an Ichneumon wasp has visited and taken advantage, by laying her eggs in or on the bee’s eggs.
I suppose they are more a resin bee as they line and seal the nests with resin collected from somewhere nearby. Then they finish off with a layer of earth so the hole doesn’t look much different from the surrounding wood. They are very particular about this finishing process and it is the only time to get a shot of them, when they are in the open and fully focused on the nest. And until they finish a nest site they usually sleep in the hole and can be seen pulsing in the night light of a good torch.
It is still very early in the year for bees and wasps so I expect there will be ample opportunity to observe the comings and goings about the bee’s ‘holed log’ hotel. And they are not the only bees to take up nesting there but the others are just too fast and small so far, to get any pix.
Another curious structure has begun to appear at small holes around the house, and on another log of different wood that I also drilled for nesting creatures. It’s a wasp’s nest to which there is a mud tunnel for an entrance which the wasp takes much time to build. After the wasp is done the tunnel disappears and the hole is plugged with mud.
All just going about their business, except for the ubiquitous ants who go about everybody else’s business, it seems – raiding smaller bee’s nests, at a cost. So I make it that the ants can’t have everything by hanging the nests from a rope or chain and make it impassable without wings.
Such is living in this little piece of urban jungle.
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Bugs Galore …
This one went to sleep in the Sunflower, no better place to wake up first for an early start to the day.
… or, how to attract bugs to your garden so you don’t have to go hunting and can’t say you can’t find any to shoot – with the camera of course … :) You don’t have to be a gardener, sense will do, just don’t think too much.
Bugs need all the same things we do, so it shouldn’t be difficult finding any once the basics are provided – by you and the available but often unknown, unpredictable or hidden nature. These days, after so many years of insecticide and habitat destruction, ignorance of the simple fact of things, nature can do with a little help from friends – people who have some respect for the little things without the need of reward other than the nature itself. That’s the idea anyway.
This one came in the house one night and I caught it when it landed, put it on a Sunflower and got a few shots – no idea what it is, Sawfly maybe …
Where to start? Put yourself in the creature’s shoes and look at what you need for the basics. They are no different to us, just smaller and it’s a jungle to them, or a desert, but wild and savage either way. We’ve got a piece of earth, no matter how small or barren it is, and depending on what is most obviously absent I would start with that. If it’s shelter that’s missing provide some, in the form of plants and old tree trunks if there are any handy, or anything that will provide shelter from the elements will do, even bricks or just bits and pieces.
Plants need water and so do bugs, so water is necessary, watering the plants and an open and available source which can be as simple as a bucket you keep filled – bird’s love it too – will serve many creatures as long as there is ramp access of some kind, like a stick or other stable buoyant object/s for them to drink and gather from.
Got a good watering as I do the daily rounds, didn’t seem to mind much …
For food a compost heap of only vegetable matter is a great production ground. Keep it moist and shaded and it will be a centre of life in the garden even if it’s not obviously so. Don’t be too discrimination, the spiders and plant bugs have to have their day, and the garden will eventually find its own equilibrium. Save any plants you can and be generous to the garden and its needs – and it will be generous in return. That’s the way it works, diligence is always rewarded, and you don’t have to be an expert though there’s nothing stopping you if that’s what you want in order to know and understand more.
Flies, love the compost heap. Also attract predators, another form of life in the wild little nature.
Shelter is essential if the other basics are in place. If there’s nowhere to sleep or rest the bugs won’t stay for long – would you? So the plants are shelter to some bugs, the compost is that to others, you can have a heap of wood in another spot, and then there is the mimicry of specifics such as for bees that I have.
I have an old cut log that I drilled varying sized holes in for all the flying creatures that might take up residence. I had it up for months before any bee took an interest, and then wasps and other flying creatures came along and many holes are now occupied by the next generation.
If I am attending enough I may even see some of these babes emerging.
If you have wings and are the right size, and like holes, this is the place for you – see the bee approaching bottom left …
One thing the little nature doesn’t need is philosophy, or teaching of any kind. They are instinctively intelligent and don’t need to dwell on anything outside the moment so they are as content as can be, no problem.
One thing I have to watch out for is the Ichneumon Wasp, she parasitises the others nests and that won’t do. So I discourage them, in my way. Just as I discourage parasites of another kind, the human kind …
Mantis, keeps the hungry Grasshoppers in check, naturally …
Other predators are also attracted to the garden if you give it enough time.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Little Earth
Out where the soil is dark and damp there grow cities for the little ones. You know, the little people, the fairy’s, the bugs ‘n’ things …
On cities called plants, some deliberately grown for the purpose, are housed in their way all the different kinds of creatures, and fed by flowers and other inhabitants in particular. All sorts of shapes, colours and sizes, and with their particular niche, fit the metropolis called the garden – not unlike people in that way.
I haven’t been tending it as much as usual, getting down and dusty with the magical ones, but haven’t been neglecting them either. Everything has its season; some plants can’t stand the condition of the soil – too much clay, or just don’t fit into the network for long and die off. And the creatures grow, come and go, and I move some around if they are decimating a particular area.
Yes, I interfere, that’s why it’s called a garden and not a forest or meadow – gardens are managed somewhat, though as little as possible in my case. Much because I don’t know anything about gardening, plus I prefer to see what arises from the earth given the best conditions I can provide – with water, rot, light and shade.
One unusual housing complex, an old log I drilled with the possibility of bees making nests in it as it hangs under the veranda, is now well on its way to being populated. There are Orange Tailed Leafcutter bees, one kind of mud working wasp, a big old long and thin Ichneumon Wasp looking to lay in some others nest – and another short and fat kind, a variety of other flying creatures, scavenging ants – and a long term resident Spider. A host of creatures making a home of the holes I drilled – moving too fast to get many shots of them yet.
One thing about the nature is you’ll never catch it ruminating on the past; it’s always in the present without the speed bump of self reflection to bring it grinding to the turgidity of emotional consideration – we endeavour.
Flying or standing still in its ever coloured coatings, shining brightly in the summer sun, there’s truth in that worn old beetle.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Death by Any Means?
I have an old friend I met recently who is going to die. I met her in my explorations of the Euthanasia or Right to Die movement, which is a story in itself and I will go into it another time. We are all going to die but my friend knows her time is up and she wants to go peacefully and not in one of our ‘reputable – for their lack of care’ retirement homes or on the hospital production line where you can be assured of only one thing, the indignity of institutionalisation and the subjection to the will of others that implies.
But she has to go alone because nobody close understands or is fearless enough to stand by her and just speak of death, and do what is necessary. So I wrote her this when she asked if it is ok to speak of her death.
What a shame it is on the status quo you have to speak to a stranger about dying, the most intimate experience in consciousness. If I was there I would stand with you and by you. But the times and technology allow this, so this will have to do – isn’t that good.
If people can’t be spoken to of death, to you of your death, then a pox on their houses – that’s just karma, to wake them up to the suffering they cause by their belief in it, or their fear of the believers – a belief in fear. I know what it is to be alone, to do what everybody else thinks is wrong, with no fallback position. But alone doesn’t have to be lonely.
I have spent a lifetime, almost, tearing the insanity of ‘religious’ (or other equally absurd) belief from my eyes – planted by the Irish Christians, and our stupefied society, by the way of things – and I won’t let them stop me conveying my hard earned vision of what this life and death is. I claim the same right to speak.
It’s dying alone you refer to. I don’t know your situation and I am not there yet but I have touched the darkness and my mind would reel without right preparation – having looked at it for long enough and to know I have nothing left to do. Here’s what I see.
Death is as natural as the sunshine. Only people make a problem of it – in their fear, many older mature cultures have respect for it and for those on their way. Because we are of the Earth and not of the mind that fears and knows the lovelessness of the world. The Earth is not the world.
The Earth is where everything natural happens without anything holding on to it and making a problem. The Earth is where everything beautiful is born and nothing gives up until it’s time is inevitable, when there is no other option. We, as humans, can add to that ‘when there is no other acceptable option’, somewhat because of our misplaced obsession with living longer that has devised custom and technology to prolong living beyond the natural death of the body – an absurdity if ever there was one.
The Earth is a place of great wonder and beauty and when the time comes we die back into it, as we came out of it, whether we believe it or not. And what we die back into is not just the body to the earth but the Soul (if you like) to the Mother earth is. Earth is the mother of us all, no? In every way we come from the earth, by the power of the sun.
And when you die it is the love of the mother you die back into, the love that turns to wonder and beauty here. So when you leave, leave the world of fear and belief behind and embrace the original love we come from. It’s inside now, downwards, or up towards the dark sun.
Every death is a birth into a higher octave of being, the way a musical note ascends to the next and leaves the last behind – for it to be. And every death with a knowledge of birth is a death of a pioneer, the birth of a truly noble creature in another place.
It doesn’t all have to be rational, or make sense. Just follow the ring of truth out of this place, when the time is right.
Encouraging death? No, encouraging fearlessness, encouraging courage – the real stuff of nobility.
Clarity is your best friend, in the end.
Be easy, as much as can be.
Total peace? In existence? Where every thing is hard-wired to hold to living, to the last drop? I don’t think so. I think that simple instinct to live, that turns to the fear of death upon reflection, will always be a disturbance in some measure, especially as one sees death’s approach.
What I ask myself is have I done what needs doing, is ‘my house’ in order. If the answer is ‘Yes’ then it’s only fear and I can do what I know is right and acknowledge the simple good. It’s good to be in the senses, to see the nature, feel the breeze, hear the bird – or whatever is ‘sensible’.
And it is good to go to sleep, after a long and tiring day, down through the sensation inside. Where, along the way, I may dream of conflict but just as here, it will pass if I don’t hold on. And as I fall deeper into sleep the fear – and the fearer – dies, like the Chimera it always was.
Maybe that resonance is the ‘ring’ of truth, the bell calling me home? Saying, it’s all right now. There is nothing to fear any more.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Cock o’ the Walk
When you watch nature’s creatures you soon begin to see an extraordinary thing. They don’t get emotional. They don’t have psychological positions to protect from dissolution, because they are not identified with any of it. They simply live their life, doing what they do from moment to moment.
If only people would do the same, but with the knowledge that to cause pain is to receive it, whatever form it takes. And that’s what we do until we wake up to it. I am not special, I know this from my own experience of getting it wrong, of giving pain instead of love.
But waking up is not easy, even, or especially, for the ones who think they are already special. The ‘revolutionary’ fighters of causes, the so-called spiritual ones who love to dress up – inside and out, anyone in fact who is identified with what they demonstrably are not – that is a psychic condition and demonstrably unsustainable.
We, I, am demonstrably the body, inside. Outside is just the appearance of inside. And inside I am the simple sensation, that never lets me down, or I am nothing – an apparent psychological impossibility, but only if you believe that. Anything I think is a Chimera, gone with the next best wind.
I don’t believe, in fact I have spent my life tearing down the belief I was inculcated with by the dysfunctional Catholic church in the form of the Christian Brothers schooling – the most violent people I have ever come across, simply because they used such trickery you didn’t know you were being used and abused – and all in the name of god. God wills it! The cry of hypocrites down through the ages.
God wills nothing of the sort. I say god would have you know love and enjoy the beauty of the earth and rest in knowledge of uncommon truth. People who had taken a vow of celibacy in a vain attempt to emulate a fallacy of the master Jesus being without the love of woman in his life – even though there have since been found scrolls that put Mary Magdalen at his side when the 12 disciples had already abandoned him – bloody cowards, lost in their hopes and fears. And hail Mary, for her undying love. :)
The body won’t be denied, it is a sexual entity, evidence the world population if you need any. And what is suppressed comes up in another place but distorted. Hence the worldwide phenomenon of priests being chased, at last hunted down, for their sexual abuse of children who were in their care. ‘Care’, a euphemism nowadays for neglect, or worse.
The same is true of any organisation that puts ideology over actuality. Ignore the fact for long enough and it will come home to bite you in some other form. The trick to waking up and ending this absurdity called our way of life is to get back home, back to the reality of the body, inside, as the sensation first, and acting from there and not from what the mind conjures out of want and greed, desire and ambition – for position or power, usually over others.
But how to do it, get back home? Well, you can make a start here : Meditate. Or wherever you find what fits you. And just keep at it until you break through the crust of mind that would have you do something else, to fill your inner space.
And the fundamental key to it all? Relax, be easy, let go, inside … And Kick some ass if need be. My 2c. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Nature's Place 
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