Dead bees…

Our garden in Wales is full of dead bumblebees. We arrived on Saturday night to find twenty or so dead on the drive and over our long weekend dozens of others died before our eyes. I watched as they fell to the ground with a drone like a shot down Messerschmidt. 

Actung, actung! It was so upsetting. I put as many of them out of their misery as I could with a well positioned flip-flop and a twist of my foot on the concrete but it made me feel bad deep inside.

Luna, being a cat of course, was fascinated even though most of the bees were out of her reach as she was hampered by her harness. It didn’t stop her trying though and she caught a few. Fortunately male bumble bees are without sting and these were so on their last-legs (all six furry pollen encrusted of them) that they weren’t in the mood to put up much of a fight.

Apparently male bees frequently die in hot weather through exhaustion, literally working themselves to death in the heat. Or it could have been starvation; if there’s not enough nectar to go around that sometimes happens. Of course it could be just the other bees moving out their dead and dying, they do that to keep the nest clean. or maybe it was the bee disease that has wiped out a third of the bee population across the globe.

Whatever. They were dying just the same.

Bumblebee nests are uncommon, usually just holes in trees or the ground and not at all organised like honey bee nests. I watched a few of the bees, not really trying to find the nest but looking anyway. I have an idea where it might have been, but I left it alone. Let buzzing bees bumbling be is my motto.