Honey Bee with Pollen

     I’m a beekeeper’s daughter. The funny thing is I have been terrified of bees most of my life. Only in the last couple of years have I realized that really, they won’t all get me. It’s huge that I’ve been able to get closer to bees than before. They end up in my pictures of flowers all the time, when I don’t even notice.
     Today, I did. This bee that looked distressed, landed on a raspberry leaf and started dancing around. For a moment it looked like she was dying. Then as I watched, she cleaned her bum of the haphazardly smeared pollen and flew away. Bees really are lovely insects, and incredibly important to us. Without bees it would be incredibly hard, or impossible to pollinate all the growing things like fruit trees and plants, so that we would end up with food. Love the bee, because their “little” job is very important to us.