A BEE STING

I haven’t posted anything for ages, here is another poetry installment!  A silly one at that…. 🙂  I took this photograph at Yellagonga Regional Park in spring.  There is nothing deep and meaningful about this poem; I wrote it a few years ago in jest, after a mishap with a honey bee of the stinging kind.  Some facts about Australian Bees: we have around 1500 native bees in Australia.  Ten of these species are stingless, the rest can sting, although they are not aggressive, and relatively small, so their sting is usually not too much of a worry.  Unfortunately the most commonly known bee in Australia is not native (Apis mellifera); it is the common yellow-brown commercial honey bee.  European pioneers  introduced this bee in 1822 to produce honey for food (these bees are aggressive and real stingers).  Australian native bees don’t produce enough honey for commercial use. They pollinate particular Australian native plants; although stingless bees are efficient pollinators of macadamias and blue banded bees show potential as pollinators of greenhouse tomatoes  (http://www.aussiebee.com.au/croppollination.html).  These particular bees I have photographed are Australian native bees, pollinating Banksia flowers.  Australian stinging bees can sting repeatedly, unlike the European honey bee, which only gets one chance at stinging before it dies.