This photo was taken in my yard on Sunday afternoon.
That’s my hand.
And those are a few of my “girls” — did you know all worker honeybees are female?.

This is for someone signing himself “Gary” who emailed me this morning. Gary wanted to tell me that “Chicks are not good with bugs” and therefore he “can not believe” in the existence of my bees, he says…

Uhm.

Who on earth pretends to be a beekeeper?

I mean, it’s not like pretending to be a proctologist when you’re stuck beside a really boring gabber on a long plane flight. It’s not like pretending to be interested in football for the first three weeks of dating a Riders fan. And it’s not at all like pretending you enjoyed your mother’s deep-fried wombat casserole…

Really.

So the question remains. Does “Gary” think that I’m sadly self-deluded, or that I have some mysterious and sinister purpose in claiming membership in the fraternity of apiculture? We’re not sure, and — alas — I can’t ask him directly, because he used a fake email address.

So all I can do is say, “Yes, Gary-whoever-you-are, I do keep bees. See? There they are now.”

And guess what else? —

Chicks are good at whatever we want to be good at!

Oh, what the heck, I’ll throw in a portrait of one of my queen bees getting ready to lay an egg, and another photo of some field bees coming home with saddlebags of bright yellow pollen…

Just to share my joy in the miracles of Nature. And because my little honeymaking girls are pretty darned sweet.

(Click the thumbnails for bigger pics, if you’re interested.)

And if you’ve got the slightest doubt that these are the bees of a Domestik Goddess, check out the lovely retro 1950s ice-cream-parlour green that I’ve custom-mixed and used to paint the bottom boards on all my hives.

My honey-collection boxes (not shown here) are a lovely coordinating retro pink, by the way. True. And I’ve got the photos to prove it.

The bee on the left is one of my own honeybees. She lives in a nice white box in my yard and flies about visiting the flowers.

Notice that the gentle honeybee, unlike wasps and hornets, won’t sting unless she absolutely has to, to help defend the hive or the honey or the queen mother bee… If a bee stings you, she will die.

But she’ll always put the well-being of the colony ahead of her own interests and safety — it’s her instinct.

Even more gentle and sweet is the bee on the right. She lives (on a black satin cord) in my jewelry box.

This is one of a pair of lampwork-glass bee beads that came as a sweet surprise from their creator, Josephine Brooks (Lampwork Art). So cute!

I had visions of using them to make a pair of glass bee earrings…
But last night I gave away the other bead.

I gave it to one of my best girlfriends, also a beekeeper, who has had a very tough year — she needed a happy little bee-beady surprise. Yes, it was hard, hard, hard to give up one-half of my two-bee treasure. No question about it — I had to struggle with a bit of natural greed before I could say “This one is for you.”

Funny how things work out:
My friend’s delight, in the end, made my own pleasure in Jo’s gift all that much greater… and I’m willing to bet there’s a Life Lesson here.