"Honey, I think I just saved your life!"

She was small and weak and apparently out of gas.  This sounds pretty dramatic until I tell you she was just a honey bee sitting on the windshield of my car when I left the city of Turlock.  I decided to call her "Honey."  Poor helpless creature!  Honey hung on for dear life motionless with the wind in her face as I drove home, about 15 miles.  

I began thinking about a Moody Bible Institute scientific film about honey bees, a film that I used to show in the schools in Argentina.  It told how sometimes honey bees can run out of fuel and thus cannot fly.  The film says that if you give them some sugar water sometimes they can revive and lift off for home.  

So since, after I got home, she was still on my windshield and not moving, I decided to try it.  I mixed up a few drops of water with some sugar crystals and placed it on a sticky-pad-paper and attached it to my windshield so that the drop of sweet stuff was right under her nose... that is, if bees have a nose and I'm sure they must have... and a good one too... to detect the frangrance of blossoms from long distances.  Immediately she placed her tongue in it and started to drink.  Soon she was walking around a little bit and even climbed up on the paper and started cleaning up around the edges.  

Since she was now standing on the note paper I gently picked it up and carried her into my backyard and slid her off onto the petals of my sweet, "smiling winter rose."  She seemed delighted and climbed all around on the rose dipping her long tongue into sweet nectar.  I shot a couple of pictures of "Honey" and soon tired of watching her eat and went inside, but 5 minutes later I went out to find her gone.  And I imagined hearing her buzz away singing, "I'll fly away, Oh Glory!  I'll fly away!"  

It must be at least 10 miles, if one flies in a "bee-line," back to Turlock.  Let's hope she made it home safely.

Ralph