Bumbling through the Garden

I love bumblebees. I consider them the big shaggy dogs of the bee world. Appropriately named, they bumble about through the garden, happily buzzing from flower to flower. I've even found bumblebees resting on flowers in the evening, the good dog asleep on a fuzzy rug of yellow.

Of course, one must always remember that dogs bite and bumblebees sting. Yesterday, Sierra rescued a bumblebee from a bucket of water by scooping it onto a stick and set it on a flower. She was so proud of her heroic deed she called me outside to see where she had set the bedraggled fellow. If only she had stopped at that point. I went back inside and not ten minutes later she was screaming that the bee was stinging her. As she ran to the door I could see the bee on her shirt, buzzing and angry. I pulled the shirt off and tried to carefully shake the bee away, but it would hear none of it. It continued to poke at the shirt, clinging tightly with its chubby legs. I finally left the shirt outside and went in, where Marina was applying a paste of wet baking soda to Sierra's stings.

I asked Sierra what happened to the bee. It seemed so upset. After a long series of questions I learned that the bumblebee had fallen off the flower and Sierra felt the need to try to force it onto a stick so she could place it back on the flower. We all have our limits. The bee wasn't too happy with her poking it and ended up jumping onto her hand and stinging her. She managed to sweep it off her hand, but it continued to attack her.

And so another lesson learned from watching animals:

There is a fine line between being helpful and bugging.