The bees are back and we are bloomin’ glad... but is there a sting in the tale?

I’d say the bees must be absolutely killing themselves laughing at us now. Remember two years ago, when we were all about the bees? I can’t remember the exact statistics now — not least because I no longer care — but it was something in the region of global bee populations declining by 50%, native Irish bees almost extinct, and — the scary small print — if the bees die out completely, humans will become extinct a decade later. I can’t remember why now, but I’m going to summon the full power of my D in Leaving Cert biology and estimate that it had something to do with pollen.

The forecast was terrifying enough for whole government departments and local authorities to start pollinator projects and rewilding whole swathes of our national parklands. In our individual smaller patches of the world, we were advised not to mow our lawns in May or at least until the dandelions had passed. And so, for the last few years, I’ve let the grass grow as high as a baby elephant’s eye, and then I dig out every single dandelion plant, before — get this — blowing the clocks back over the now holey grass so they’ll come back the following year.

I planted flowering plants specifically to attract bees and when the occasional buzzing visitor did come calling, I gave him all the space and time he needed to perform his mysterious humanity-saving rituals.

If one appeared to be flagging on my watch, I’d put a tea-spoon of sugared water on the ground nearby to boost its energy levels. I considered offering them the keys of my car. Well. I’m no apiarist — though I’m guessing you’ve figured that out for yourselves by now — but it seems to have worked. Again, I’m unwilling to Google any sort of statistics to back this up, but I can’t be the only Defender of the Bees whose garden is currently buzzing with their fat, furry little bodies. They hover around my blooming planters with their tumbling flowers all day, making occasional sorties to the blue flowering bush on the far side of the garden (I would tell you the proper names of these plants if I had a plant identifier app on my phone that didn’t keep changing its mind every time I submitted a photograph for its apparent idle amusement.) But the growing thing — plant or shrub; you decide, because apparently the €9.99 a month app can’t — that the bees find absolutely irresistable is a sort of frondy, flaxy concoction I planted about 12 years ago that has suddenly, for the first time ever, flowered. When we spotted the two sturdy stems growing out of the plant, laden down with their mysterious buds, we got very excited in our house and, as we tend to do, essentially opened a book on what colour the surprise flowers would be. They’ve been in full bloom for more than a fortnight now and it’s still hard to say who won. They’re a kind of yellowy green pod a bit like a small pea — but with little red — red! — fronds sticking out the top of each separate pod. They’re certainly not something you could ever countenance putting in a vase but I love them because they look madly prehistoric, serving up a reminder that these kind of plants were around long before we were and may be here long after we’re gone as well. Maybe that’s why the bees literally queue up to clamber all over them (as do the slugs, who instantly die as soon as they make contact with the flowers, making them all the more alarming.)

Anyway, if my own garden is anything to go by, we did it: we saved the bees. All that rewilding, all those pollinators, my own terrifying and mysterious frondy thing: it’s all helped with the current rude health of the humble fat bee. I don’t know if they have little bee newspapers in their hives (to reiterate, I’m not an expert) but if they do, then I presume they’re currently reading the sort of apocalyptic articles we read two years back — only theirs are about endangered humans, not bees. And will the bees start changing the way they run nature in order to save us humans? Will they f***. Having taken over our gardens, they and their mad Day of The Triffids style frondy friends will soon be invading our homes while we’re still queuing up outside concrete vaccination centres. And as with every other environmental catastrophe, it will be all our fault. Well, good luck with trying to turn on my immersion with your powdery little legs, is all I’ll say.