Natural wonders to watch out for this week...

An Indian summer of sorts beckons this week, and with it the last charge of the bees. My garden is filled with all manner of bumblebees and honeybees, buzzing about with furious abandon as if they know the party will soon be over. Over summer, they spread out across the garden, feasting on everything from clover in the lawn to flowering tomato plants in the greenhouse. But as those nectar sources diminished, the bees homed in on the herb patch by the back door for a last hurrah.

I’m watching them now as I write this at my desk on the other side of the glass: zooming between the red rosettes of an ice plant, a late-cut lavender whose stems wobble under their weight and a couple of mammoth sunflowers. As they weave about one another fixated on their task, the bees remind me of railway commuters scurrying about a station (that is, of course, when people used to actually do such things rather than just stare at bees out of windows all day).

I count various species: white-tailed bumblebees, red-tailed bumblebees (easily spotted by the bright red colouring on their bottom half) and the buff-tailed bumblebee, which has a yellow collar on the head and another near the abdomen. All three are among the UK’s “Big Seven” of bee species and can be spotted in parks and gardens. There are honeybees, too, on manoeuvres from a nearby hive. When autumn arrives and the temperature drops, those bees will retreat to their lair and huddle together to try to retain enough heat to survive until the spring. The ultimate aim is to keep the queen alive and the hive forms a tight inwardfacing circle around her to generate enough body heat. Those on the outside of this collective endeavour are the first to perish, sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

For centuries, humans have regarded the selfless toil of bees as a source of wonder: inspiration somehow for a more ordered style of society which continues to evade us. In the 19th century the bee became the symbol of Manchester for its exemplary industry and co-operation. Victorian illustrator George Cruikshank famously drew

The British Beehive as a riposte to contemporary demands for societal change, with the military and banking system at the bottom and the Queen, Lords and Commons at the top, propped up by the Church and a free press.

As for the bumblebees, I’m afraid it will soon be curtains for most of them. After these last few weeks of toil, the workers will die off. The new queens – and I think I’ve recently spotted a red-tailed bumblebee queen in my garden, a magnificent specimen the size of a thumb – will burrow down into nests to see out the winter before restarting next year’s hive.

I suppose this is the equivalent of heading out to the Caribbean in a superyacht before sailing back in the spring. As for us worker bees, there is little option but to enjoy the last of the sunshine, and to keep toiling away until summer reaches its bitter end.