Wing surfing

Photos and text by Sarah Phelan

It isn't until I'm walking along the shoreline in strong headwinds that I fully appreciate the strength of bees.
Because they there are, surfing the tops of the flowers on veinated wings despite the wind conditions.

By mid-August the stands of fennel along the shoreline are at least six feet  high, sometimes more. So, for a  bee to scramble across the fennel flowers foraging for nectar and pollen in a strong wind, would be like me scrabbling across the top of the Empire State Building trying to sip juice and pick up lentil crumbs in gale force winds, wouldn't it?
Or perhaps it's the law of physics that make riding the wind more like surfing the water when it comes to insects?

Either way, as you can see from this picture, the fennel lines the Alameda shoreline. What you can't see from the picture is that the wind is blowing in from the ocean, unobstructed, by way of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.

Yet somehow the honey bees manage to navigate these challenges with seeming ease, as they stretch over time and space to probe the next pot of nectar with their tongue and stash the next batch of pollen into baskets on their hind legs. Now it's true that by the end of a month in the field, bees' wings become torn and frayed, making it harder for them to fly and navigate the winds. And this may be what ultimately kills an aging bee: unable to fly back to its nest at night, a honey bee will probably die of cold. And if it returns in a poor condition, its sisters will ultimately evict it from the hive. Still, for now, it's still the halcyon days for the honey bees of August.