Bee Rescue
What do you do if you find a bee on the pavement?
Do you assume it’s dead?
We found one yesterday in front of the house. It had a deep orangery red rest end but was jet black otherwise.
It was motionless.
But I picked her up.
Safe in the palm of my gloved hand she moved her leg. Bees can be badly hit by cold. In the spring where deceptive patches of sunshine catch them it seems safe to start the occasional foraging flight. Bu, if, like yesterday, the sun disappears she can find it to cold to move.
This particulary large specimen looked important.
After a little sugary water and a warm rest inside the house, she perked up.
We checked her out on Bumble bee Conservation Trust and decided she’s a Red tailed bumblebee and probably a queen. So it’s worth trying to save her as she can carry the next generation of bee DNA.
She enjoyed breakfast with us this morning. We have put her outside in a warm spot. Hopefully she will recover and survive.
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24 comments on “Bee Rescue”
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You did a grand job 🙂 I won’t assume a still bee is dead from now on. I have picked up sluggish bees and taken them to flowers quite a few times. You can blow gently on them to warm them up too.
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It’s always with a closer look. And often fairly easy to check what type of bee she is. A queen that can be saved is well worth the effort. Don’t give them commercial honey though as it may do them harm.
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Well done you! Often the bees have just ‘run out of fuel’ or are too cold to fly…and when you think that a single Queen Bumblebee can produce up to 450 worker bees, it’s well worth the effort, as you say.
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It’s a big responsibility.
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When my honeybees first started flying this spring I found one by the back door that didn’t make it back in before it got cold again. I brought her in and fed her and the next day popped her back in the hive. She was “only” a worker, but I couldn’t just leave her there. Now I know it was good practice if I ever find a queen bumble in dire straits.
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Yep. Help them out. It doesn’t always work as bees away from home are getting old but it’s a chance.
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Yay! Love insect rescue stories! <–bug lover!
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I have, once or twice, set bees on flowers to let them feed up, and that seems to work. I’ve never looked up what kind of bees they were though. In fact, it never occurred to me. They were bees. I thought that kind of closed the conversation.
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I’m severely allergic to bees and wasps so I’d be getting someone else to do the picking up, but yes, I’d be keen to help one out if I could. I have never thought about feeding one sugary water, will keep that in mind for future rescue efforts. Unfortunately the most recent encounter we had with a bee involved us driving our car on a local road and the bee colliding with the windscreen. No amount of sugar water was ever going to revive that one sadly.
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Scooping it up with a piece of paper might help.
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I had heard once that bees can’t fly if they get too cold. One summer morning I found a bee walking back and forth in front of my door. I put my hand out and it crawled up. It nestled in my palm for a few minutes and just that heat alone was enough to make the difference. It was able to fly again. I was babysitting my nephews at the time. It was so wonderful to see the look of amazement on ther faces!
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That’s all it takes sometimes.
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Wow! I am so thrilled that you take so much care for something so important that is so small. Well done. I canimajine her going back to her bumble bee home and saying, “See, there is a god.”
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Thanks. It was easy and she’s doing well.
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I was just told by a friend that we have some telepathy ongoing in our posts today 🙂 I wrote about the rescue of a bumblebee and had the identical experience like you. Awesome!
Becky
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That’s a great confidence. Was yours a queen too?
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I have no idea, luckily it needed just something like 1-2 hours to recover and be able to fly again. I was so amazed that I spent all the time watching it eat, so I didn’t look up and from my pictures I can’t really tell what species it was. But it was amazing 🙂
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Maybe next time. It’s great when they recover.
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It is! Such a great feeling to see them rise up again!
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Yes. Always optimistic.
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Thanks for this post. I found a cold little honey bee under my patio chair today. I gave her some sun and a little sugar water. In no time she perked back up and flew back to work 😊
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So glad you did!
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This post has stuck in my head since I first read it. I thought about it as I saw an ailing bee in the garden and decided that it would be good to try and save it. I did not have any sugar water, but I found a few dandelion blooms and a sunny spot. After a nice snack and maybe 30 minutes the bee was revitalized and flew away. Before reading this post I would have never thought to do that. Thank you.
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No thank you. You may have made a massive difference particularly if she was a queen.
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