NEW NEIGHBORS: I keep hearing about so-called “die-offs” among some honeybee colonies, but just the reverse happened in my backyard. The busy little insects and I have happily coexisted for years as they hovered around my lavender bushes. Pesticides are partly blamed for the troubling decline, but I don’t use the stuff. After all, we badly need the little folks because they pollinate our food crops.
I just brush past the bee-busy bushes with nary a sting. But recently we noticed a small cloud of bees buzzing around a tree in a corner of the backyard. A colony had settled in. How long they’d been there we didn’t know. But they seemed to like it.
When we moved in, we’d noticed a gaping hole in the base of the tree. At some point, the gardener nailed a board over the hole to keep the rain out. That left a gap, and that’s where the bees were happily buzzing in and out. They also enjoyed the nearby water feature, sharing it with all the birds that come to feed.