THE hum of bees is the voice of the garden,’ wrote Elizabeth Lawrence. Certainly, there is no sound so evocative of a pastoral British summer than the rumbling baritone buzz of the bumblebee. For ‘the red-hipped bumblebee’ (as William Shakespeare styled him in A Mid summer Night’s Dream), it always appears to be Sunday afternoon. Although the honeybee is a perpetually revolving cog in an industrial machine, the bumblebee meanders lazily around. It never appears to be in a rush. Bumbling and tumbling in the flowerbeds, it seems a little sozzled, perhaps the consequence of all that amber nectar slurped with its long and hairy tongue from lime blossom and borage, blackthorn and honeysuckle. You feel that, if the bumblebee could talk, it would sound like The Fast Show’s Rowley Birkin QC.
Like Mr Birkin, the bumblebee is hairy and rather dishevelled. Its feet—as Raymond Bradbury noted—‘are dusted with the spices of a million flowers’ and its shaggy, rotund body is at times so coated in pollen it looks like a water spaniel after ransacking a familysized box of honey-nut cornflakes. The bum- blebee whirls and undulates, falls from petals and bumps into walls. Portly and unflustered, it appears happy with life. Perhaps William Blake was right when he said: ‘The busy bee has no time for sorrow.’
Denne historien er fra April 26, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 26, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
