[ExI] bees again

[spike]

For life form of the year, I nominate bees.

My father in law is a commercial bus driver in Washington state.  He
commented on the paucity of fruit in my yard this year; one of my orange
trees produced exactly one orange.  I told him of the pedestrian bees and my
discovery of a dozen dying or dead bees.  He made an interesting commentary.

He regularly drives bus thru fruit country, Spokane to Wenatchee to Everett
to Tacoma to Seattle and back.  After doing this for many years, he knew
exactly which stops would require scrubbing the smashed bees off the
windshield in order to be able to see at all.  

In those twenty six years of driving bus, he saw in spring of 2007 something
he had never seen before: he arrived at the usual scrub-the-windshield bus
stops with a perfectly unobstructed view from the drivers' seat.  In
remarkably many cases he had one or two slain bees after charging thru the
heart of fruit country.  In normal years it is difficult to see thru that
windshield at all after the Everett to Wenatchee run, occasionally
necessitating an interim stop and scrub.

Without bees, we shall devour very little fruit and almost no nuts.

spike