Attacked by a Lovesick Bee

I love my office. It’s in the tower of our Victorian-style home. My desk is tucked under the windows and as I write, I can glance outside and view the flower gardens, the orchard, the woods. It’s a lovely work space, light and bright. After 20 years of writing on such fine desks as a rickety card table (complete with my mom’s old manual Royal typewriter that dropped the e’s) and a desk wedged into the dormer in the living room of our apartment, I am grateful beyond words for my pretty, spacious office. With windows. Lots of windows. My last desk at  when I was a marketing manager was a gray cubicle in a cubicle “farm” – picture hundreds of cubicles lined up in rows on one city block – at 2 Penn Plaza, right above Penn Station in Manhattan, with a view of a brick wall, Macy’s Herald Square and 7th Avenue. Except that I was far from the windows so I didn’t have much of a view except the back of the head of the girl who sat next to me. I hate cubicles. Whoever invented them should be consigned to eternity sitting in one and trying to work.

But I digress….

With temperatures soaring to 90 this week, my office became unbearably hot. As a freelancer I have the flexibility to set my own schedule or work elsewhere. So I’d work in my office from 7 a.m until around 2pm. Then I had the bright idea to take my laptop out onto the deck and write outside. How pleasant, I thought dreamily as I set up shop on the picnic table on our deck. I plugged in the garden fountain. The scent of hyacinths perfumed the air. My laptop booted up. And then…

WHIZZZ……dive bombed from above.

With a scream and I shout, I jumped up. I’d been attacked by a large bee!

We’d seen him hovering outside the sliding doors that lead onto the deck. Now I realized he was still hovering there. Only now he was angry. Good and angry.

WHIZZZ….it was like being in the old World War I movies with an airplane dive bombing you.
“Shadow!” I screamed. “help! Protect!” My German Shepherd dog looked up from her place near the railing, yawned, and went back to sleep. This is a dog who chases and snaps at wasps. But she didn’t care much for my bee.

WHIZZ….it was in my hair!

With a scream and a shout, I packed up my laptop, grabbed the dog, and hurried inside, slamming the screen door in time to lock the warring bee outside.

This was no ordinary bee. I set my laptop up on the kitchen table and did a quick search. I had a hunch, by the way he’d been hovering outside the door for a few days that he had other plans. He was also quiet, not buzzing – except when he was dive bombing my head.

Sure enough, my search gave me the answer. He was a carpenter bee. His hovering and air dances were to attract a mate. My lovesick Romeo bee was protecting “his” deck and “his” territory. And the fact that getting tangled in my hair hadn’t resulted in a sting became apparent when I identified his species; the male carpenter bee has no stinger. The female has a large stinger and will sting to protect her nest. Carpenter bees are generally harmless. They eat pollen like bumble bees, but tunnel into wood to lay their eggs. Each female is solitary and they do not create a hive, but rather mate sort of like birds, with the female creating a tunnel in wood to lay her eggs.

No sign of a female yet. Maybe they don’t like his dancing? Poor Romeo. This morning I checked and yes..he’s still hovering and making his intricate dance steps in the air. I wish him luck, but hope he moves back into the woods soon. I’d really like to sit out on the deck and write one of these days!