A Bee, Being

 bee on

bee at

bee in

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Photos taken in my garden, Summer 2004

*Actually, it's a wasp.  But 'bee, being' sounded better than 'wasp, wasping'. When I was a child we used to catch bees in our hands and run around with them closed inside our fists yelling "Bzzzzzzzzz, Bzzzzzzzz!" , then let them go.  Did this dozens, hundreds of times, and never got stung.  The next door neighbor boys told us "Yellow heads sting--but whiteheads don't"--whiteheads being a much lighter shade than the deep yellow of the yellowheads.  So it must be true.  Or else we were just lucky.  I just looked it up on line and apparently the ones they called whiteheads were actually male carpenter bees that may seem aggressive but are not able to sting.  We girls just accepted, after observing four or five demonstrations of "See! It didn't sting me!" that what Lloyd and Rollie next door said was true.  They also taught us which of the "monkey vines" on the hillside were safe to swing from and which would break off and land you on your butt if you tried swinging from it.  Ah, childhood!