The last few days, I've been fasinated by the habits of bumblebees. I grow seedum in the front of my house and it's HUGE. The bees love it, which mystifies me because the flowers are tiny - but there are hundreds of bees swarming the plants every day. Why don't they prefer the gallardia? Or the cosmos? Or the zinnias? I guess the nectar is sweeter.
In any case, I've noticed something interesting. At night, as the sun goes down and the air cools, the bees don't leave. Bees can't fly if they're cold and you usually don't see them in the evening - they hie their little bee bottoms back to the hive. Just not now, and I wonder why (I also find it interesting that they crawl underneathe the flowers, but that's something for me to figure out another day). Here are some pictures I took this morning:
Here's a bee on my sedum:
And one on a Cosmo:
Last night, I woke up in the wee hours, and couldn't get back to sleep - a typical occurance for me. I started pondering the bees habits and then wondering if I could relate it to my writing (other than the fact that the bees are strange, and so are writers -- that was just too easy).
This is what I came up with.
When our stories are hot, we are busy little bees, writing until our fingers bleed and unwilling to stop because that might end our hot streak. But eventually, all good things must come to an end. Night falls. Inspiration cools. Our fingers slow. But we're unwilling to fly away from our story because we remember its sweetness.
So we crawl nearby and keep it close. And we sleep. We wait for inspiration to dawn and warm us again, and because we've kept it close to our hearts, we can dive easily back into its sweetness once again.
Busy as bees has taken on new meaning.
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