Bee Odyssey
It has been a tough season for the bees, with all the rain, constant and stuttering through the year and the apparent dearth of flowering plants – at least in the fields where I first found hundreds of them, now so few. Other, unnatural reasons too.
There have been more in my garden than I found in the wild, well enough I planned for it and kept something flowering, and something still – even though winter is upon us and the nights can be so cold, with a clear open star filled sky aswirl.
An occasional visitor now, so few to be seen, found atop the blue Salvia in search of nourishment, a resting place where the sun might strike come morning. I gave it a little honey and adjusted position for the light and warmth of the day, a warning.
We need our bees, not just for what they can do for us but for what they are and do of themselves in the order of things. We are the ones out of order, messing with what should be left alone, then messing again to correct our misguided interference – ad infinitum.
That’s just the way we are, until we are not. But what is it that wakes us? The pain of loss?
Oh well, then roll on … little beauty.
We’ll see …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Surprise, Surprise …
… as I was picking at the Passion vine a couple nights ago – checking for resting or sleeping creatures, clearing dead leaves from the tangle and pocketing the ready fruit, I noticed a curious thing.
One of the leaves I picked was long dead and brown, dried out and curled up, but as it plunged to the ground where it would join in the mulch a bunch of tiny bees fell out and spilled around, almost unnoticed.
I didn’t know they were bees until I took a few shots, being only 12 to 15mm long – my eyes not that good anymore, if ever they were. Then I put what I could find at the base of the vine’s stem and threw on a few more leaves for cover on the cold night, to increase their chance of survival, having disturbed it myself.
The next day I had a look around the spot and there they were, back on the vine, gathered on two adjoining leaves, exposed to the warmth of the sun and the coming night sky – it’s been getting cold here in Brisbane, believe it or not. Clearly they were attracted to congregate but I couldn’t tell anything of where they began their little lives, maybe in some of the hollow stems I put in the vine to encourage the smaller creatures to nest, those that do.
I have not seen the like before, apparently social bees without a home, living on the wing as a ‘swarm’ of around twenty individuals – actually they are a communal bee, males in waiting for a female who nest ‘communally’ nearby, not ‘socially’. That’s what happens when in the garden, the forest or field, aware I am not alone, delightful things appear. The truth of fairies and elves living at the bottom of the garden, in fact they are everywhere but are not what is imagined from the storybooks of old. The magical is still here to be seen, awake to the possibility, restrained from thinking too much – necessities for presence.
Presence, that’s the difference between the rapacious and the sustainable. The former born of wanton indulgence of the machinations of mind, the latter born of knowing enough its consequences. The one follows the other, unfortunate it would seem but misfortune is an unsustainable condition of mind so we move on regardless …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Fly Time
Autumn has turned to winter here in Brisbane, which only means a variation not an actual season change – this is Australia after all.
Apart from the temperature, which is more comfortable than the summers, different plants and animals have their turn – that is how our seasons churn.
Though there are still a few bees to be found in the garden I have been attending to the flies that are often ignored or are just too fast and flighty – I approach them gently. They like Daisies too.
They are also beautiful creatures and have their place and do their job, filling a need of the earth to keep on turning – even in the face of man’s ignorance by our use of insecticides and idealised gardening practises – I actually feed them.
But you can’t keep the nature down, where there is a crack up it wells, where there is a need there will be a taker for the job. And if we should succeed in killing enough we will only kill ourselves, and wouldn’t that be justice – in our almost total neglect of the earth.
You can see it coming, the train wreck of present day capitalism’s (man’s) barely regulated greed and man’s unbelievable arrogance that is ruining the earth in endless war and ideology out of the desire for power over others and the fear for the future, which begets its own form regardless.
The future we fear is coming, by it’s fearing – that’s karma, but nature will always push up through the cracks because man as he is is not so powerful or important as he thinks – there is a greater power behind that requires no belief when we look to see, and it has no face. Beautiful, wonderful, magnificent nature that only requires acknowledgment to be, a fly.
And the flies had a ball. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Rainbow Wanderer ll
I was in the rainforest and not much was showing up so I put a tiny drop of honey on a rotting wooden post to see what would happen and the beetle, a beautiful darkling in a rainbow coat, showed up. Then the ants showed up and the beetle ran away. It got to the rim of the rotting post and seemed to think twice about running and turned around to go back to the honey. Honey must be total nectar to the small creatures, bees being so protective of it.
All the while I was shooting what I was seeing, from the best angle I could for DOF and aligning both creatures at the same time. A little exercise you could say. I took many shots and then decided on the arrangement to suit the story. The story was real but I couldn’t get the shots to tell it as it happened.
When the beetle turned round to go back to the honey there was an ant waiting for it and it stopped it at each turn. It was at first cowed by the ant but didn’t give up on the honey. The ant even turned its behind to squirt formic acid at it to begin with but still the beetle came on. The beetle persisted passively and the ant gave eventually way until the beetle was back near the honey and the same ant appeared to be confronting it with a warning – ‘watch out mate’.
Slowly but surely the beetle and the ants came to an unusual understanding and made a meal of the honey together, one on either side of the treasure. I suspect the ants just didn’t want a fight for the honey as there was enough to go round and better not to risk injury or death – survival being foremost of any creature.
That’s instinct working intelligently.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab
Rain On …
The weather is still changeable and a few bees still about. This one came out a bit different with Blue Salvia and reflective in the BG.
These bees just keep going no matter what, as long as the conditions are conducive … and it all changes in the blink of a storm.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Autumnal Spring
It looks like the rainy season is coming to an end and it feels like Spring. But that’s only here in Brisbane, Oz. What couldn’t stand the heat and dry or wet is now coming into its own, sprouting, blooming and seeding. It’s nice and cool at any time of the day.
There are still native bees about and I suspect this Autumn’s Spring will give way to an abundance of forms, and then it all changes again. The nature of being in existence, change.
Even up a ladder there were bees flying about. It’s good to see, to be.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Waiting on Time … to Pass
A few on Salvia, a blue flower I got for the bees.
Fly resting on a twig.
Potato Beetle making a meal of the Belladonna.
The elusive Carpenter Bee making a rare appearance at her nest entrance.
Time seems to fly. It is a while since the last post and it behoves me to keep going and not let too much time pass between, as that risks lengthening with time. It’s a practise, one that pleases me, and I trust others.
Change takes time and it’s that I was waiting on. But I can’t wait on change as that just puts it off anyway. Life is contrary, have you heard? Seeking or expectation brings about its opposite. The key to change is to have had enough of the way it is and see the fact without trying one way or another.
I know some – many – do believe, that decisions have to be made, but I live my life not theirs – in my timelessly time filled way.
And so I won’t ‘philosophise’ any more today and leave you with images of our little cousins.
It has rained a lot lately. From the garden of nature to you.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Adventures after Dark
Because of advancing age and early injury that result in the slow breakdown of the body, I make compensations or compromises to go on doing what I most enjoy as far as practical application of my skills, character and predisposition are concerned.
So, in the cool of the night, rather than the heat of the day, I have been making the best of what I know of the wildlife hear-abouts – capturing them while they sleep or are otherwise less cognisant of me and my approach for a shot.
Since finding them and learning of their roosting and sleeping habits a few years ago bee’s have been my favourite creature to image, especially at the dawn or dusk when the temperature is best for taking some time for getting the composition right – for my taste – especially the now little seen Leaf-Cutter bee.
I am long past chasing them around during the day, though I do love to get shots of them foraging it is rare enough that you don’t see many, but time tells all – all that can be told in that time is enough. I don’t fret it is the point – not that I am Mr Peaceful either at times, human is more appropriate, with a spiritual (a word that conjures images of charlatans selling the all-cure snake oil on the street corner – for me) bent – and I know better, though the real thing appears rarely – whatever ‘real’ is.
I won’t go on too much now, or last too long maybe, so I will do what I can to bring you the beauty of the form, colour and function of our little cousins – before they too disappear from common, or any, awareness. Because the way things are going, business as usual or worse from our esteemed social leaders, it won’t be long before we, the people, wonder what happened to make the earth such a hostile and difficult place, when in fact and truth it is the world that is hostile – two completely separate realities extant in parallel.
Is it really a choice? Or an inevitability, as Man never really learns except by pain. Unfortunate, or just the fact of human nature? You have to start with the fact …
The earth will be ok in the end, as it was in the beginning. It doesn’t suffer, it only undergoes, and still is, regardless, irrepressible.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Painted Stranger
Once more unto the breach, dear friends – however small that hole may be. And never relent in the making of light, no matter what the impediment.
That’s what this endeavour of mine is at times; a reminder to acknowledge the simple good of sense through the wall of mind or physical pain that depends only on what I attend to – largely.
And so there was this visitor in the garden that I had only before seen in passing flight, its size and flash of colour the only track of its existence. A mystery until it presented in masked form, a mystery still.
The Passion-fruit Vine attracts many a visitor these days, being of fruiting maturity, flowers of delightful aroma. An oasis to many a little one, the fairies and elves of our nature, that come and go as they please.
Occasionally inspected by the Vine’s guardians, the little army of black ants that know no fear or favour – just the command of form and function.
There is no disposition in nature to give up, until the end, of form and function – missing a piece of a leg a beginning, a common condition – mobility being essential in an ever moving world.
Anything not mobile is ant food.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Nature's Place 
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