Besides, do bees really “suck” nectar? It seemed to me, having never closely observed this process, that they probably “sip”—certainly a more poetic term.
Monday, at a lunch a few miles outside of Santa Fe at an organic farm passionately worked by a young couple, I noticed some hives nearby on the hillside. A good friend told me about his experience with hives in his city garden.
“The bees love water. One even came to my palm when I held it out with some water in it. And I saw that instead of drinking as I’d imagined, the bee actually sucked.”
This led to another discovery: placing a piece of bark in a basin of water gave the bees the chance to suck water the bark had absorbed, apparently easier for them and maybe less risky than drawing from the water itself.
I love having a friend who can enlighten me in any way and this was especially rewarding since Shakespeare’s poems is one of my favorites which I recite when I wake up at three a.m. This happens so much I’ve named the hour, “My old friend, three a.m.”—made a good deal friendlier by repeating the poem.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
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