With all the time and care I have lavished on my garden, I am still often surprised at its beauty and abundance. There is such a variety of plants, flowers and food that bursts forth that I completely forgot to consider the side effect of all that garden life: BEES.
I am not a fan of bees. While I respect their important role as pollinators, I try to give them as wide a berth as possible. When a bee invades my personal bubble, I am quick to jump, run, scream and sometimes wave my arms around wildly in a vivid display of my human evolutionary defense tactics. Imagine my consternation on finding that EVERY SINGLE PLANT in my garden is a bee favorite! Now consider that the family across the street from me raises bees. Yes, that’s correct, they are beekeepers. No, I doubt that is a full-time job. But there are 14,000 honeybees that make their home a mere 300 yards from my front door and who have taken up employment in my garden. In addition, there are other flying, buzzing creatures who appear similarly smitten with the plant life therein, some of which are even more aggressive than the bees. All of this takes place literally inches from where I enter and exit my home.
I’m not the only one who has encountered this difficulty with the front door of my house. At a family party on Saturday afternoon, several partygoers commented on the garden only to be attacked in the face by hundreds of bees moments later. That was not popular. To top things off, it seems to be grasshopper season here in Northern Virginia, so once the head is sufficiently clouded by bees, one can run screaming onto the grass to be blanketed by grasshoppers. It’s definitely biblical.
It’s difficult to know what to do to solve this problem. Killing bees and grasshoppers is not an option at ALL. This is an organic garden, peeps! For those that aren’t aware, honeybees are in short supply and are almost on the brink of endangered due to hive collapse. I’m sure grasshoppers serve some useful purpose in the environment, although I don’t really know what it is. As a clueless gardener, I suppose I’ll have to research that a little. I will say that the grasshoppers are a nuisance; one afternoon on the way to a job interview, I opened the front door to a cascade of grasshoppers. What appeared to be about 100 of the explosively bouncy insects saw the opportunity to come inside and seemed to think that would be neat. It felt like someone threw a bucket of water at me, except the water was grasshoppers. Also, it would have been easier to get rid of a bucket of water by drying it up. The grasshoppers had to be chased out the door bit by bit, which made me late for my job interview. THAT was embarrassing.
I’m in the process of devising a way to get in and out of the house without being attacked by stinging, flinging insects. My children have been traumatized by this process. But unfortunately, it’s the most direct route to the car which is where we’re usually headed when we go out the front door.
Next year, I will have to devise some bee-free options for the garden. Bees are incredibly important for pollination and my garden is full of flowers, fruits and vegetables, however they are a little intimidating. Fortunately none of us is allergic to bees so it’s really more of a nuisance. But for someone with a bee allergy, this situation could be potentially dangerous. I have to find some way to curb this so we can all benefit from one another - the plants, the bees and the people. Can’t we all just get along?
