She is tattered, at the end of her short life. Her body shakes and shivers. I tiptoe closer but she’s too preoccupied to bother with me. Slowly she clasps a bunch of leaves with thin black legs and draws her abdomen up into a sickle shape, with the tip pressing under a leaf depositing a tiny pale-yellow egg. She repeats this process several times resting in between, vibrating. It’s a big effort and I marvel at her energy and determination. At her peak she may have been laying between 300-400 eggs at a rate of 40 eggs a day! Now on her last legs she is perhaps the last of the female monarchs that will visit our swan plant/milkweed. There is a slim chance her offspring might slowly pupate through winter and emerge as new adults in spring. And there are other reminders that this is a time, a season, of dying and release.
Water weeps out of paths, berms and oozing down streets gutters. A cold start to a day with strong southerly winds. I stumble across a dead bumblebee, head bent down, large black eyes still glossy. Its yellow and black downy back is soft to stroke but underneath it’s body brittle, hard and cold. Legs akimbo. I roll it over gently in the sun. I’ve never had a good look at the underside of a bumblebee’s abdomen. It’s also black with a row of regular horizontal segments. A female worker perhaps. She has a smooth convex-shaped structure (called a corbicula) at the base of her legs to collect pollen, and a stinger at the base of her abdomen.
At lunchtime a succession of bumblebees fling themselves into the lee of our north facing deck, landing on blue chairs, bowing their heads into crevices between the canvas and the wood in what looks like exhaustion. They are still for a while just their abdomens pulsating softly. This time of year signals the end of the lifecycle for the old queens, her female workers and the males. Though some might be newly fertilized queens searching for a place to hibernate. I offer honey water to one passed out, clinging to the gate latch. She/he sips hungrily. Maybe not enough nectar flowers around now. Bumblebees are always on the edge of starvation.
Clinging to a gate latch. She/he sipped hungrily from honey water I offered and gathered strength to fly again.
Edge of Things 