While we are seeing fewer honeybees than in the past, the bublebees seem to have taken up the slack lately. At least things are getting pollinated, even if there may be less local honey. As a child, in a neighborhood with beehives, I took the honeybees and the honey utterly for granted. The landscape was so moving with honeybees, on the fruit trees, berry bushes, and clover lawns, that it would have been alien indeed to imagine a lack of them. I suppose that the process of aging brings that feeling of alien moments from each of our own childhoods, for good or for ill. This one makes me sad, sometimes, and now, when I see a plentiful group of honeybees, working on blossoms, I have a small bubble of joy.
