Bee Careful

I bring this up because of the post about wanting to plant lavender in Minnesota.  As much I would love to plant it, I might have to plant it too far from the house for my own enjoyment because lavender is a bee attractant.  It's the blue flowers.  Bees LOVE blue flowers.  I learned that the hard way when I decided to plant Russian sage near my mailbox one year.  Let's just say that I'm sure I was a topic of conversation on the street because I would wait until the dead of night to run out to the mail box while the bees were asleep.

Obviously, I'm allergic to bee stings.

When I moved to Minnesota, I started apple picking in the fall- what fun!  They used to have this great little apple orchard in Eden Prairie (Eden Apple) that had at least 6 different varietals.  The first year, I got a little carried away and ended up picking a couple of bushels of apples....

If you haven't picked a bushel of apples, all I can say is that it's a LOT of apples.
It's about 9 gallons to one bushel!

I, incidentally, learned how to can apples that year...but that's a different story.

I had so much fun that I decided to go apple picking every year.  One year, I got stung by a bee and my whole hand and arm swelled up.  I got to take a lovely trip to one of the area hospitals because didn't know how bad the swelling was going to get and we didn't know what had happened until the doctors said, "Looks like you got stung by a bee".

I didn't even see the bee!

I certainly would have left it well enough alone.

Well, I got an epi pen for life, a sleep dose of 1500 mg of benedryl, and a lecture about how these allergies usually get worse with every exposure, so DON'T GET STUNG.

Uhm, I think I understood the "Don't get stung" without the doctor saying so, but whatever.  I find most of the advice given by doctors to be on the "duh" level.  "It hurts if I move my foot like this", "Well, don't do that"; "I've had this cough for a couple of weeks", "Have you tried some cough drops?"

Anyway, BEES are what I was and am always on the look out for.  After a forced semester of entomology (study of insects), I learned that there are MANY different types of hymenopterans (bees and wasps- think "humming insect")  Some sting, some don't.  Some are big, some are small.  Some are very poisonous, some are not.  You've got to kind of figure that insects, being the most numerous creatures on the face of the planet, would have diversity.  After all, how can they survive the next cataclysm is they aren't?

But my simple request to all of you, as a bee-phobe, is that if you're going to plant a beautiful garden, don't plant bee attracting plants near your front door.  It makes it very interesting trying to come to visit you when your front porch is already occupied.

Or perhaps if you have friendly neighbors that are allergic to bees, you'll want to plant every bee attractant in the book between your houses.

If you're interested in learning more about bee attracting plants, Berkeley has a great online site bee gardens.