Counting Bees

I never planned to become someone who counts bees.

About thirty years after I first walked my childhood fields, I found myself on the same paths again, walking as though I was there only yesterday, as if no time had passed at all. Late spring. Daisies and dandelions scattered across the ground, just as I remembered. The place had barely changed.

But something felt different.

A honeybee approaching a dandelion

I sat down on a little rock and looked around. I smelled the air, touched the ground, picked up a daisy. I stayed there longer than I expected, reminiscing about my childhood adventures there, trying to place what was missing.

It took me some time until I saw it.

When I was a kid, the air hummed with bees. They lifted in clouds with every step I took. The place was alive. I never consciously noticed it. It was simply how that place was. Now, it was quiet. Not peaceful. Just empty.

A Bee in blossoms

I waited, hoping I had come at the wrong time of day. Then I saw a bee. Then another. I started scanning the flowers carefully, one by one. Before long, I found myself counting. In a place that once held countless bees, I was now using my fingers. Later, I would come to recognise this decline in bee population elsewhere as well.

I stayed there for hours that first time. Watching. Searching. Observing. What began as a subtle unease became an urge I could not ignore. I started reading about bees, trying to make sense of what I had just seen, or more precisely, what I hadn’t.

An Australian Teddy bear bee

Since then, watching bees and photographing them has become a normal part of my summer routine. At first, I focused on honeybees and bumblebees. They’re easy to see, easy to recognise. But over time, I started noticing others. Much smaller ones.

The sweat bees.

Some of them are only a few millimetres long, almost invisible, easy to miss. And yet, they’re responsible for about 30% of all bee pollination. I observed their buzz pollination with fascination, how they vibrate flowers to release pollen that other bees can’t reach, something entire plant species depend on. Their small size also makes them particularly challenging to photograph, especially in flight, which is part of what draws me to them.

When people talk about bees and pollination, they usually mean the larger, familiar ones. But these tiny bees are also part of the system, moving through the same space, doing work larger bees cannot do, work that mostly goes unnoticed.

In the photo below, a 3 mm sweat bee flies next to a honeybee. Same field. Same moment. Completely different scale.

A sweat bee next to a honeybee

So, next time you pass a patch of flowers, slow down. Stay a little longer. Watch closely. There’s much more there than first appears.

All photos in this post were taken by me. No AI was used.