Today, as on all days when it’s sunny and warm, I drug myself outside to sit in a lawn chair and commune with nature (and Agatha Christie) for a while. My lawn is full of grape hyacinths, which attract big bumbling buzzing bees–I think that I learned last year, on the Dope, that these are actually carpenter bees, but they look like bumble bees so that’s what I’ll call them.
Two days ago, I saw a beautiful Window’s Mantle butterfly actually chase a bumblebee away from me. It then perched on my chair for a while to be praised, before going about its butterfly business.
Today I saw something much more sinister. I was at the part in The Seven Dials Mystery when Jimmy Thesinger hears some suspicious footsteps in the library at ten minutes till two in the morning… and I heard something suspicious in the bushes behind me. Turning to see what was the matter, I saw not a bee and a butterfly but two bees, locked in mortal combat amidst the blossoms. As I watched they continued holding fast to each other, buzzing loudly and ascending rapidly. They leveled out at some twenty feet above me, when a third bee arrived on the scene and the whole thing broke up.
So, bee lovers, what was happening?
