arthropods

I am very sad about the bees.

And very worried. We have a buddleia globosa in our garden which is a beautiful huge bush with sphere-shaped yellow flowers that bloom for three weeks every year around this time. A few years ago this bush was one big ball of bees buzzing for the entire time. They love those little round flowers! I once sat surrounded by this bush, as in a bower, and listened to the buzzing all around me. No bee came near me as they were all much too interested in the bush. It was glorious.

This year I'm seeing hardly any bees. And today I found two dead bees underneath the bush.

I am very worried. I want to get a hive and plant bee-friendly flowers and put the hive in the back of our garden.

It's weird; back in the 70s we used to have fantasies about a post-nuclear-holocaust world in which human life had become extinct and insects ruled the roost. And now: it's the insects' survivals we're having to be worried about. Because ours depend on it.

P.S. I know, of course, that my icon is not a bee. But it is an arthropod!