The rain is falling, the leaves are beginning to fall, and the bees are about done with their bee thing, but we had a recent bee related conversation I wanted to share.

“Mommy! I’ve decided I don’t like bees!” Georgia came to this after her friend Zola was stung, and had a very painful, swollen hand that impeded her make-believe. Georgia was suddenly afraid of bees and wanted them dead.

I’ve worked hard to encourage Georgia’s love of things buggy, and bees have always been a fascination for us. So this news was distressing, and I went into Eco-Mom mode.

“You remember bees pollinate all the flowers, and lots of the food we eat? If they didn’t take the pollen around to different plants the plants couldn’t make fruits and vegetables. Bees are really important!”

“But they sting, and I don’t want to get stung by a bee.” She argued.

“I’ve been alive a lot of years, and I’ve only been stung by a bee two times.” I told her about how once I stepped on a poor honeybee, and the other time I put my hand on one that was resting on a handrail. “Bees only sting you when they think are in danger, they don’t attack you for no reason. And bees are not doing so well right now, so we make sure we don’t use any poisons that could kill them, and we plant flowers they like to get nectar from, and we respect them and appreciate that they give us honey and keep our food growing.”

She seemed to take this in, but still flinched any time she saw a bee. Little by little she warmed back up to the bees, getting closer to the lavender, hollyhocks and clover to watch the honeybees and bumblebees and tiny unknown bees in their whizzy-bizzy collecting dance.

Our neighbor came out and we started talking about the lawn. He likes to keep it short and weed free, we are fairly lax and encourage the clover, and Georgia begs us not to pull too many dandelions. Our houses share a parking strip that he keeps very neat, and I apologized that we were not keeping up our end of the mowing.

“I’ll keep that part up,” he said kindly. “I’m going to put some spray on the clover to get rid of it.”

“Oh, please don’t spray our side, we like the clover!”

He looked at me a little confused.

“We want to save the bees!” Georgia said. That’s my green-eyed daughter!

I just read this great article on what you can do to save bees, so while you’re ogling garden catalogs over the fall and winter, plan a bee-friendly yard for the spring! Check out Urban Bee Gardens for a start.

Photo credit: TTaylor