We have bees!

On the dry grassy slope of our front yard, ground-nesting bees have made homes. The first bunch appeared in early July. More recently two other holes have appeared at the top of the slope, and the kids tell me there are more in the back yard. Each morning when the sun shines on the slope, there becomes a constant stream of bees flying out and up, and down and in. I can't tell where they're going. Some fly off to the north, some fly off to the south. Others go straight up and over the house across the street. They must be traveling quite some distance. At first we were simply surprised to see so many bees coming in and out of the little hole. Then we worried that they might be easily agitated and attack, perhaps carry away, one of the kids. How would we ever mow the grass? Now, I've decided the danger to us is probably minimal, as they've really shown little interest in chasing, dive-bombing, stinging, or carrying us away. I even mowed the grass, passing right across their holes, without a single sting. The kids are still a little distraught, complaining that the amount of yard available for playing has been rather reduced by these potentially hazardous little pollinators, but I think we've all come to accept them as fellow inhabitants of our space, and we're happy that they've chosen our yard to make their home.

I tried to take some pictures of our friends with Abbey's camera. This is hole number three.


When the sun has just cleared the tops of the trees across the street, and the bees are buzzing busily about, their sunlit wings standing out against the background of shadow, the air above our yard is wild with the motion of ascent and descent. I tried to photograph the chaos, but with little success. The shutter speed was too slow to keep up with the bees, but the result was an estimate of wing beats per second. The shutter speed for the picture below was 1/60 of a second. Each bee captured in the image beat its wings 3 times in that short window.