Macro Monday: Buzzed

In addition to Sunday Stills, there is a group of people who post a macro picture every Monday. Macro is just super zoomed in. I have yet to participate but thought I'd have a go at it today. I may not do this every week, but we'll see.



We got buzzed, and not in the way your thinking.




Last week we were waiting our turn in line to get our trailer washed out. The truck in the wash bay was a flatbed and he apparently had been hauling bee hives, complete with bees. There were hundreds of dead and living bees being washed up out of the gaps between the boards on his deck.



Some of the living ones were flying around, and a number of them were buzzing our truck.



This particular little lady (aren't all worker bees female?) stayed on our windshield for the duration of the other trucks wash. I found myself wondering if she was perhaps a Montana bee and had recognized a fellow Montanan.



Bees travel more further than you may realize, and I'm not talking about their normal pollen collecting flights.

I have read of a number of honey bee farms in Montana. One in particular I was reading about a couple weeks ago so I'll use them to illustrate my point. They live in northern Montana and have been "farming" honey bees for a couple of generations. Their bees spend the summers vacationing in Montana hay fields, resting, gaining strength, and being vaccinated of sorts. Come November, or there abouts, they are loaded onto trucks, hives and all, and driven to California where they spend a number of months working in the almond groves.

Later in the spring they are reloaded and shipped to the Washington apple orchards. So as you see they get around! Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "busy bees."