Bumpin' Bees

Every once in a while something so small and seemingly mundane happens and if we didn't take a moment to stop and look we'd miss it like a star falling in the night. This was Uncle Bubba's experience just the other day. He was washing the car in the driveway and unwittingly perceived the buzzing of bumble bees behind him. It was not an unusual sound to hear, he was used to it where he lives, but the buzzing was somewhat magnified and his country boy mind got the idea that there was more than one a-buzzin' 'round his head. Looking back over his shoulder he saw three big ol' fat bumble bees hovering around a white blossom on a wild pepper tree, just about head high.

3 bumble bees - 1 flying lower center,
1 right edge, 1 on the flower

One bee, appearing larger than the other two landed on the blossom and proceeded to go to work searching for it's nectar. The other two buzzed around urgently, occasionally tussling with each other mid flight. Now, Bubbie's been around watching wildlife long enough to know that there was something going on here of the reproductive nature. Yessir, he figured there were two boy bees lookin' to bump uglies with that big ol' girl perched up on that flower. His gentlemanly sensibilities caused him to pause and consider whether or not he wanted to get to knowing about what was going on in any further detail, but in all his years he didn't reckon he'd ever seen such a bumble bee thing so he pulled out his cellphone camera and coyly snapped a couple pictures. He wasn't sure that bees even mated in such a manner but it sure looked like that's what was going down! With a little research later on he discovered that booty bumpin' bumble bees was most likely what he had witnessed.

Bubbie was a little red-faced telling me about it as if he'd witnessed something in a back alley behind a beer garden; almost ashamed that he had photographed it. But in Bubbie's view, it is such a rare and natural thing that he felt obliged to share it. Ain't love grand?