Drunken Bee

A drunken bee

sipping from The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild

My dear friend Elizabeth has been taking pictures of drunken bees in New York City, and she requested examples of the same from my garden.

Funnily enough, I already had this picture on the camera. But not so strange, really, because I have dozens of roses blooming at the moment . . . and they do tend to attract bees . . . and bee behavior seems to fascinate photographers. Tangobaby managed to catch an astounding close-up of one just the other day.

My bee is just a blackish blot, so you'll have to take my word for it . . . but this bee was so rapt, so avid and utterly absorbed, that it reminded me of a newborn baby at the breast. Like me, the bees prefer the sun . . . and when it is shining, they appear in clouds of buzzing bliss, like nectar-sugar addicts.

(This rose is in the middle of my herb garden, and I had to practically lay down on the ground, mashing mounds of chives and fennel, to get this view.)

And because I can't resist alliteration, and admire a writer who thinks to use the word "bibulous," a poem for my subject:

Bees

You voluble,
Velvety
Vehement fellows
That play on your
Flying and
Musical cellos,
All goldenly
Girdled you
Serenade clover,
Each artist in
Bass but a
Bibulous rover!

You passionate,
Powdery
Pastoral Bandits,
Who gave you your
Roaming and
Rollicking mandates?
Come out of my
Foxglove; come
Out of my roses
You bees with the
Plushy and
Plausible noses!

Norman Rowland Gale