Bee season

Not only is it tractor season, it’s also bee season … as well as wasp, hornet, and buzzing-stinging insect season. They’re everywhere. And they’re curious. They find me particularly interesting – not that I’m flower-like (!), but more likely that I’m pungent in some compelling way, leading them to investigate with a dogged persistence. Doesn’t matter whether I’m inside our outside either, they’ll find me, and they’ll sniff.

Apparently they’re prolific around this time because of the ripening grapes. I wasn’t actually told this, I’m just extrapolating from a comment that during grape-picking and wine-making (at least the local variety), anything goes – that means the swarms of wasps and bees that buzz around the sweet ripening grapes end up in the drink along with everything else (thereby giving wine an unheralded protein content). But it makes sense to me that they’re around at this time, given nature’s innate way of creating intersecting bio-rhythms.

In any event, there are not only regular bees, there are also wasps just like yellow jackets, and these monster wasps or hornets that are less interested in me (thank heavens), that we mostly encounter in their final moments, tottering along before buzzing their last. One of the smaller wasps stung me the other day, and it’s taken a week for the irritation to go away, leaving a hole in my arm to boot. (Reminds me of a man back in suburban US who ran into a yellow jackets’ nest in the woods, and was dead in 30 minutes as they swarmed out and over him in defence of their domain.)

So with these able and willing stings about in such numbers, there’s really only one way to handle it – with a Zen-like patience and acceptance. Think: “This is their place just as much as it is mine, and they have a right to the honey on my finger just as much as my tongue does.” So when they investigate – as one is doing right now (apparently reading what I’m writing here on my laptop) – I simply stop, let him find out that there’s really nothing for him here in spite of the misleading odours, and resume when he moves on to other sources. Often this takes him a few iterations to make sure (they’re thorough, if not super-smart) … which is where the patience comes in. All good for the soul, I say.

There’s also another buzzing insect, that I know only as a stink bug. It’s clad in a sort of green armour, and apparently stinks when crushed. I can’t vouch for this since I haven’t smelled it yet, so I report on the basis of hearsay. However, it’s not the stinking of these bugs that I find interesting, it’s their flying.

Now, as a flying insect, I would have thought that their capability in the air would need to be halfway decent to have made it this far without becoming extinct. It seems, however, that this is not the case, because they must be the worst fliers that I’ve seen – each takeoff appears to be the maiden voyage of a malfunctioning, diminutive mechanical toy with a built-in obsolescence amounting to but a few minutes. They’re so clumsy, and slow, and noisy, and without even the slightest semblance of direction, bouncing off even obvious obstacles (like walls and foreheads) as if they were not visible, that I would have thought they’d be simple fodder for birds, bats, lizards, and other bug-eaters. Apparently not. The only thing I can think of is that they taste like their reputed smell – ghastly, thereby removing them from all menus.

As a result, there are many of them – thousands, in fact. They don’t bother me much, since they don’t bite, but they freak Maria out, so she’s devising some evil plot to strike terror into the heart of all stink bugs that venture anywhere near 31 Regnano.

For me, their success is encouraging. After all, if they can still be around in such numbers, there’s hope for everyone …