In the yard today, I saw two or three peach blossoms blooming. When it was in full bloom two years ago, a lot of bees came from nowhere every morning, flying around in the flowers. When it was getting dark, these bees disappeared without a trace. Bees work hard all day and all month, go out to collect honey, and fly as far as 12 miles away. These bees should have flown from the surrounding parks or canyons.
Except for the bees collecting honey on the tree, occasionally I saw a bee on the ground, motionless, and thought it was tired, so it stopped to have a rest. After a while, when I went out to look again, the bee had disappeared. The bees around the flowers were still buzzing, maybe that one was also among them, busy collecting honey.
Later, I discovered that a worker bee can live up to six months. With such a short lifespan, there must be many dead bees in the hive besides honey, queen bees, and larvae. Bees are very thoughtful. When they are old and frail and can’t gather honey, they say goodbye to their relatives and friends, then die quietly outside and never return home.
This year, I didn’t see many bees. Maybe it was raining a lot or due to global warming. In terms of our food system, the disappearance of bees is unlikely to cause famine since we get most of our calories from grains, which are wind-pollinated and thus unaffected by bee populations. However, many fruits and vegetables are pollinated by insects and cannot be grown on such a large scale or so cheaply without bees.
