wise words
Brigit Strawbridge Howard on Rediscovering Nature
B
by April Thompson
husband, Rob, where ee advocate, they love to bee-watch in wildlife gardener their backyard garden. and naturalist Brigit Strawbridge What first Howard was alarmed piqued your the moment she realized she knew more interest in bees? about the French RevoInitially, apocalyptic lution than the native headlines about bee trees around her. Howdecline and colony ard’s realization that she collapse with female had lost touch with the worker bees leaving natural world led her hives and not coming on a journey deep into back alarmed me from the fascinating world of a human food chain honeybees, bumblebees, perspective. It hapand the often unsung pened to be around the superpollinator solitary time I realized I had bees, chronicled in her completely lost touch It’s never too late to book Dancing with with the natural world reconnect and find Bees: A Journey Back to I so loved as a child. I the curiosity and awe Nature. Howard writes, started looking for bees speaks and campaigns that you experienced and became comto raise awareness of the pletely immersed in as a child. importance of native their world; the more I wild bees and other pollinating insects. She watched them, the more I lost track of time lives in North Dorset, England, with her and the more questions I had. I also began
Celebrate The Solstice With Our
to more worry about the bees themselves than about their decline’s effect on us. Bees have been a portal to the natural world for me. It happens when many people get interested in a specific species because everything is interconnected, and you start to notice the whole web of life.
What makes bees distinct from other kinds of insects?
Bees go out specifically to collect pollen and nectar to feed their larvae; other insects eat pollen and are important pollinators, but don’t collect it for their young. They also tend to visit the same flower species again and again, which other pollinators don’t always do.
How has your study of bees affected you personally?
I dropped out of school as a teenager. Bees are the only thing I’ve truly ever studied; I am self-taught in insect biology and ecology. I have read scientific papers that I would have never thought were for the likes of me in my quest to understand more about bees. Also, when I feel overwhelmed with life, because of my interest in bees I have something else to focus on. I can lose hours and hours walking in the woods and totally forget my problems. I have learned to tune into the tiny things, the fungi and miniscule plants I would have otherwise walked past.
Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow. TH
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