Osama Bee Laden

I was out on the weekend at the gardens doing a photoshoot for a friend, and when that had finished I broke out the macro lens for some insect/flower action. I saw a frog doing frog things in a pond, and then noticed little mini frogs jumping about. It was almost too much when one leapt onto a lily flower.

Anyway, I take photos of the little frogs and when I come back to Momma (or Daddy) frog I see a little-un has climbed atop its head. This is a photo opp that could not be passed up, so I start snapping photos of it. I wanted to get a good front-on shot, but the pond was bordered by a foot and a half high bush teeming with flowers and bees.

I have a healthy respect for bees, what with a mild allergy and the painful memories of being stung on the same finger twice in the same day when I was about six, but to get the best eye-level perspective of the frog I have to lift my tripod (on its lowest setting) over the flowers to a low brick retaining wall.

This leaves me with the issue of setting the camera focus and taking the shots while I cannot easily get to it. So I do the only thing possible -- hpist one leg over the flowers and put it on the bricks, and lower myself so I can get the shots. As I am performing this graceless manoeuvre a cloud of bees swarms up out of the bushes and starts darting about. Angrily.

I’m actually doing the splits over these bee-filled flowers, crouching ever lower so I can get my eye to the camera’s viewfinder, and all the time I’m thinking please please please do not sting my nuts. Please stay calm, bees. Not. My. Nuts.

So anyway, this is a long intro about a frog photo (that didn’t really work - above) but most importantly it’s about bees. While my nuts remained un-molested by these little apic drones, as I was resetting my camera I took some time to watch the bees and pondered my lucky escape from being stung, and the bee’s even luckier escape from certain death had it stung me.

Not that I was going to the kill the bee in question in rage (quite likely that I would) but had I done so that would have been a hollow victory as once a worker bee stings you it dies. I remember thinking about how shit that was when I was a child, as it’s the ultimate lose-lose situation: I didn’t want to be stung, was not a threat to the bee, and the bee wasted its short life in delivering what it must have seen as ultimate justice. No one won, and although the sting hurt like almighty hell, the bee came off worse for it.

Bees are well prepared to give their lives for a higher goal. Now stay with me here: this actually makes bees the suicide bombers of the natural world.

They are little terrorists, willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater good. Their hives are Al Q’aeda cells, and they’re on a honey-jihad.

God help us all.

Allāhu Akbar!