LOOKING AT LIFE THROUGH BOB’S LENS GETS ME REALLY BUZZED

Or How I Bumble Through Life Trying to Avoid Getting Stung and Abusing My Stinger

A Partially Overexposed Image of What I think is a Two Spotted Bumble Bee Collecting Pollen on A Bramble Bloom as Scene Though Bob’s Lens in A Burst on June 19, 2024.

Lately (actually for some time now), I have felt a bit overwhelmed by life on planet earth, especially by the dominant form of life – the humans.  Our (the human (and the rest of it as well I suppose)) life has become dominated by the psychopaths who have taken control of our hives, and the fields and forests that support us.  On the psychopathic path, stinging is what rules.  The pathetic kings (and queens) have figured out how to get their workers to do the stinging for them, realizing what most of us know – that the act of stinging often means the end of life for the stinger.  So, for our dominators to maintain their position of power they need to convince those they dominate that stinging is in their best interest, either by promising the compliant one’s access to the some of the scraps from sweet nectar that trickles down from their overfilled honey pots.  They also provide them with almost limitless pitchers of bad mead, to wash the scraps down with, or at least help them feel good about the whole process.  Repetitive stories accompany the distribution of the scraps and slurps of suds.  The tall tales tell of how good the hive workers actually have it.  And if the stories and scraps and intoxicants don’t convince the workers, the rulers unleash the stinger on those who fail to obey the overlords’ commands to serve their insatiable demands for more and more sweets. 

This twisted picture of life as just another human worker enjoying the buzz and avoiding the sting, probably seems overly simplistic and probably even foolish and likely irrelevant.  But for this simple fool, it’s the best I can come up with today to explain my own experiences living in what seems to me a mostly un-humane world.   Fortunately, at least for me, now and then when I can get together with one of my fellow workers who seems to see the world in a similar light as my own, I receive a gift, that helps me to keep my real buzz alive for at least another day.  My latest gift came from my former coworker and current regular acquaintance Bob.  Bob and I get together now and then, have some lunch, talk, and try to get a good walk in when the latest virus restrictions allow it.  At this particular meeting of a couple of the hive minds, Bob gifted me a spare macro camera lens of his to use in trying to get some close-up pictures from life in the hive (along with some gifts of patience in listening to me rant, and also sharing some of his own findings about how to try and thrive in the hive, despite the ever-present threat of the sting). 

I took Bob’s gifts back with me to my own hive, and tried some experiments with my camera in trying to figure out how to see a more interesting and less twisted picture from life in the human hive.  My initial attempts involved trying to take closeup pictures of some of the insects that hung around in my yard.  I think I started with around 80 pictures that amounted to mostly unidentifiable dark blurs.  I tried switching to the less mobile vegetative models’ plants provided, but with the ongoing weather that dominates my midwestern landscape, dark clouds, wind, and rain made even those closeups, not be what I was hoping for through my new source of vision.  Later in the afternoon, I noticed the sun was out, so I grabbed the camera with the macro lens still in place and headed to the gardens.  The raspberry bushes in the backyard were catching the sunlight and the bramble blooms were attracting loads of pollen/nectar eating creatures that included ants, wasps, miner bees, and the bumble bees.  

I narrowed the aperture on the camera down to one of its lowest settings in order to enlarge the depth of view, set the lens focus to manual, put the shutter to “burst” mode, and with the sunshine making its way through the raspberry leaves to reveal the bug covered blooms set to work chasing the critters around with my lens trying to capture something that would make Bob proud.  During the filming process, I also avoided what Bob had warned me about – getting stung while trying to shove a camera lens within inches of insects that carry a stinger for defense. 

After 15 minutes or so I headed back into my house, and downloaded the pictures to my computer.  Then I began the review/deletion process on the 300 plus images of mostly blurred bursts of bugs and leaves.  I initially got excited to see an almost in focus image of an ant, several in focus images of contorted wasps, and bits and pieces of bees who landed on raspberry flowers and some even in flight.  Even these possibly salvageable closeups, however were not really in focus, nor did they show the big picture encompassing the whole insect.  I felt a bit disappointed and was going to wait for the clouds to maybe break and try again another day, but then when I revisited the saved images this morning, I was surprised to see one of a bumble bee, that looked pretty good to me.  Certainly not an award-winning image, but an image of a mostly in focus bumble bee probing the raspberry flower for pollen (see the partially overexposed keeper above).  Maybe Bob would let me keep his lens for longer if I produced a few more pictures like this? 

If nothing else, perhaps this image is what I needed, to realize the twisted hive that I have found myself apparently trapped in, where the psychopath’s rule with their intoxicants and stings is not the way it has to be.  My understanding of life in the bumble bee hive, is not of one where stings are what keeps the workers in order, or the monarchy in place.  All the bees, whether queens, drones or workers do their part, because that is what they do best (it probably helps to not have any kings as well) – at least that is what I tell myself.  They take advantage of the gifts of pollen from the brambles and help the brambles by spreading their pollen as a byproduct of the bee’s quest for pollen to feed the hive.  I of course benefit from the exchange, if all goes well (like the invading Japanese Beetles don’t overconsume the berry leaves and kill off the plant), by getting some raspberries to eat as well.  I suppose I get some credit as well by having planted the cultivated raspberry plants where they probably don’t belong, but then again maybe that is ok.  Balance seems to be the key, and cooperation, and maybe some reverence for the whole process as an ongoing experiment with mostly cooperation, at least more that than violent focused competition. 

Real purpose in the universe is not acquiring all the honey in the land, or even to convert the land to producing only honey.  Meaningful purpose is maybe simply to be the best bee that one can be, and get along as best you can with the fellow creatures, and enjoy the beauty of it all.  (This realization comes from Bob’s other gift – reminding me to revisit Iain McGilchrist’s book THE MATTER WITH THINGS, where I was inspired by the quote from Andrew Steane regarding purpose “Perhaps the purpose of a lioness is to express whatever good a lioness is capable of expressing.”)  

One last side note reminder is not to confuse this suggested ultimate purpose of the bee with the tall tale told to potential US Army recruits that they can “be the best that they can be – in the Army”.  Unlike the US Army recruit-ies who blindly follow orders when it comes to the use of violence, the bumble bees remember to only use the stinger as a last resort as a way to protect the hive .  Maybe the way to getting the human hive in my twisted tale more in line with the mostly sting free bumble bee hive, is to figure out how to get the Monarchs (not the butterfly kind) to give up their psychopathic ways, or face the consequences of having their stingers heads extracted from their behinds.