The Dance of the Bumble Bee

I don’t need to tell you that this summer in the UK we have faced an unprecedented, or near-unprecedented heatwave. The paddling pool splashing of early summer was quickly terminated when Thames Water imposed a hose pipe ban on this densely populated region of the UK and our lawn turned from bright green to a crisp brown. I also noticed the difference to local agriculture, with fruits ripening for harvest earlier than usual, and the blackberries popping up much sooner than I remember from childhood.

I am not a natural activist in personality, but it’s hard to ignore evidence of the climate emergency when it’s playing out right on one’s doorstep. As we face drought and annual hose pipe bans, one of the things I have been reflecting on is water inequality. How does a drought affect people differently, who are the most vulnerable and most severely affected by water shortages and who seems to be unaffected? How does policy mitigate or exacerbate water inequality in our local area?

As I begin to plan for school harvest services, I find myself in awe at the wonder and infinite genius of God’s creation, even as I am faced with its preciousness and precarity. In my own garden, I have been haphazardly attempting to grow squashes, which have both taken over in a scene resembling something from a horror movie but also failed to produce much fruit. They were, I realised, hampered by a shortage of bee visits and in need of artificial pollination. How glorious, I thought to myself as I cross-pollinated my plants with a cotton bud, that in nature this act is performed by the dance of a bumble bee. Such creativity and wanton abundance. How closely we are all interlinked in this ecosystem and how finely tuned it all must be: like angels dancing on a pinhead. Next year I will plant more wildflowers to attract more bees, and pray more fervently for rain.