I have no idea why I never noticed this until yesterday. I think it was something I had learned before. I knew it, but it never really sank in. And I never really noticed it. Until the showers started yesterday. And I noticed the bees had all gone home.
At the corner of the deck is a rhododendron. This is one of the ones with the smaller flowers that bloom fairly early. In fact, with the weather we had last week, the flowers on this plant opened up and there were blooms everywhere. And bees. Lots of bees.
I’m not sure how many types of bees were on the plant. I saw a show on bees not long ago where a person mentioned they had over forty different types of bees in their garden. I’m sure there were a couple different types on the flowers, but most of them were some sort of bumble bee. You know, the big ones that look rather furry and can barely lift off the ground at the best of times.
In any case, this plant was just buzzing with many different bees for several days last week. The bees seemed to really be enjoying the plant and were spending some quality time with the flowers.
Then rain started. Not even full on rain. More of just a heavy mist. A light shower. But when I walked by the bush, it was quiet. There was no buzzing.
This thing had been buzzing from dawn until dusk for a few days, but it suddenly stopped because of a light shower?
So I had to know, do bees fly in the rain? There are times Google can be your friend. I discovered that while bees can fly in the rain, they don’t really like to. We have probably heard that bees are not really the best when it comes to aeronautic design. They aren’t built to be great fliers. And rain doesn’t help.
They have furry little bodies and need to work pretty hard to get airborne at the best of times, so the added weight of a drop of water can really throw them. So they try to avoid flying in the rain. They can fly in the rain, but the moisture makes it much harder so they will try to avoid it. Which is why my flowers suddenly went quiet. Then bees had gone home to wait for the rain to stop.
Not that I can blame them. I hope they had a good book to help them pass the time. Or maybe Netflix.
