Insects & bees - admiration for tiny creatures
Everyone loves summer. The sun, beach, blue skies, warmth, tans, light clothing, bikinis, holidays, island breezes and plenty of salads. Summer is the time when nature comes to life. Fields blooms with sunflowers, roses exude their majestic structure and sensual scents, anything green grows rapidly and this all means that it's also time for the insect world to come out of hibernation and join the party.
Having spent 22 years in Africa, I have no qualms about plenty of bees buzzing to my orange juice, annoying flies, harmless spiders, or bugs. The odd six-foot cobra that wandered onto the kitchen steps, tennis court or grass snake that mistakenly hover around the front door or postbox are another story, but then they are reptiles not insects.
Some are terrified of insects, shriek at spiders and kill them instantly. I most definitely kill mosquitoes as the Dalai Lama once said. "If you think small things don't make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito." But I save spiders, or let them build webs here and there, as they catch the mosquitoes and any smallish furry eight legged creature does me no harm.
I admire butterflies, take care with bees and get rid of the slugs and snails in the garden as biologically as possible. Even though tiny, and inhabiting the smallest of space in this universe, I find these tiny creatures' sophisticated designs beautiful. Amazing that something so small has its purpose on this grand spinning ball of a planet which gravity and a ball of fire keep in perpetual stable motion.
Photographing bees on flowers is hard as they are lightning fast as they move from blossom to blossom, sometimes disappearing completely inside. If you stand and watch though, after a while, they exit and you can actually see the pollen they've collected before they vanish to wherever it is they take it. Bees are cute and nature is quite crafty giving such a nasty sting to this tiny delicate, black and yellow, cute little furry beast!
Everyone loves butterflies, those colourful creatures who paint such a pretty picture against any flower or shrub in summer. They come in all shapes and sizes, float around gently and their fleeting life on earth is but one day after they emerge from their worm like larvae shaped cocoon. Butterflies also pollinate flowers and suck up the pollen through their low straw like tongues. They are also a food source for others such as ants, wasps and birds and their presence or absence can tell us much about the local environment.
Some have spots and others stripes and dots
Just look how delicate those little legs and feelers are
No matter their colour they're always pretty
I wonder how much they weigh
I have no pictures of a praying-mantis or other colourful bugs as but they are uncommon in Northern Europe. Slugs and snails though seem to be common anywhere. It's hard to see slugs as pretty with their soft, squishy colourless and slimy bodies but their feelers are great works of art. One natural way of getting rid of a slug plague is to put beer or a sweet drink in a flat bowl on the ground. They down in the liquid and you'll save some plants. They seem to love petunias, basilicum and parsley, so if you grow those, it's best to put them in separate pots and away from the ground because these creatures are excellent at crawling to their desired meal. Getting rid of them as a small-time gardener is easy enough but on mass scale, farmers in agriculture producing food obviously have to use more aggressive methods. Keeping them under control means good harrowing in the spring and autumn as this loosens tied up eggs in hidden places plus the airing is good for the soil.
Snails have pretty shells and like their tortoise friends, they tend to disappear into their 'house of safety' when picked up. I normally throw unwanted snails over the hedge, where they can feed on something in the dark down below as they do tend to avoid the sun anyway. Lord knows how they manage to find their way around when literally, the space they navigate is like us trying to find our way around the milky way.
Dragon-flies are pretty and although not as varied as butterflies come in different colours. Harmless creatures, their larvae lie in water and they tend to hang around water too. Absolutely necessary to nature, dragon-flies eat anything smaller than themselves, which includes flies, mosquitoes and sometimes even butterflies.
This is one fast little helicopter with turbo-propellor wings
The shape and colour of this ones almost resembles a blue Avatar Alien in micro-form
Last but not least, are those eight legged Arachnids which are creatures with two body segments, eight legs, no wings or antennae and who are not able to chew. Many people think that spiders are insects but insects have six legs and three main body parts. I've been bitten once or twice from a spider, never actually felt it but only the itch and swelling afterwards. Spiders are cute as long as it's no poisonous Black Widow, or any hand-size, furry, 8 legged creepy crawlie. Spiders, like snakes never bother us unless we're in their way. They're hard to photograph unless they are in their web, waiting to catch flies or whatever with their trap. Although not a great photograph below, as I couldn't move through a hedge and wooden barrier, the light falling onto the web when zoomed in, shows off the intricate sticky soft fibres web. We brush away spider webs easily but imagine all the hard work and time it takes to build such a clever food trap.
In Asia, Africa and Turkey it's possible to raise and grow silkworms through the summer. If you've never done you should absolutely give it a go! Eggs can be bought online. You'll need mulberry leaves to feed them. As a school kid, I'd save the eggs in a shoe-box all year for the following season. If you don't know silkworms, this is worth watching.
When they hatch they are as tiny as ants. The eggs are also tiny, grey and pinhead size. All silkworms do is eat. When they're large enough and ready, they spin themselves into a cocoon with silk thread. If you leave the cocoons and don't use the thread to make bookmarks (worth a try at least once), the moths hatch after a while, breaking out the cocoon at either end. The moths then mate, lay eggs and die. This is a magical pass-time for children to see nature in action.
As we move from autumn into winter all these little creatures will have laid eggs, some will die and others will hide during the period of winter dormancy. It will take a fresh spring and warm sun next year to wake them . Winter's stillness, without storms is a restful quiet period, but summer's buzz with all its insects and creepy crawlies is just as enjoyable. That's all folks, be kind to those summer creatures, they're every much as part of the universe as we are!
