On My Best Bee-Haviour

Sorry, Honey, I Gotta Fly

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

So we know I'm a busy guy, right? Father of three. Husband of one. Friend of many. I've got novels to write, bloggers to catch up with, errands to run, photographers to mentor, writers to help. Kinda busy, hey?

But sometimes a guy just has to do what a guy has to do. And yesterday I spent half an hour - read my lips. Half. An. Hour. Yes, that's right, half an hour photographing three bees. Yes, okay, so I had a bee in my bonnet. Well, not quite.

There's this bush near our house and it's got beautiful white late-autumn blossoms on it. I'm not sure exactly what kind of shrub it is, but I'm confident one of my readers will be able to identify it on the basis of the photograph below.

Each blossom is only a few millimetres wide, tops. And so I wandered over to take some shots, bearing in mind that it was in deep shade on a cloudy morning. As you can see from this shot, the blossoms grow in the shape of a crown.


That's when I heard the bees. And putting aside my irrational fear stemming from the fact that I got stung multiple times, even on my butt, when I was little, I decided to get up close and personal for the sake of a good photograph. But this was the best I could do. Bees hover, which makes it difficult to draw a bead on 'em.

However, as an avid observer of wildlife, I can now reveal to you that some bees have a drinking problem. One of them had obviously had too much nectar. He would settle on a bloom, sit there for a few seconds, then he'd slide off. He'd find another bloom - and slide off again, uncontrollably. It was seriously like watching a drink trying to walk in a straight line.

I was just standing there with my camera, leaning over the bush at nose level - and I was laughing so much that my shoulders were shaking. Good thing the neighbours here know I'm just a committed photographer, not a Loony Toon.

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