What Does the Bee Think?

There are so many little lives going about their business on the Greenway, every day. The vast majority are unseen: underground, under cover, hiding themselves away from predatory eyes or keeping cool in the shadows during the already-steaming summer mornings.

We can, if we take the time, capture a moment shared with the insect inhabitants. A dusting of pollen shaken loose by a perched metallic green sweat bee. The anticipatory hover of a honeybee before it lands on a thistle. A skipper, surveying its surroundings from a lofty pinnacle. A weathered Monarch, visiting its companion milkweed flowers. 

Is the sweat bee enjoying the bits of pollen as it eats? Does the pollen of different flowers have different flavors, and does it prefer some to others?

 

Does the honeybee feel anticipation as it approaches a nectar-heavy flower? Is it mindful of the bounty it will bring back to the hive, feeling a part of the community with an important role?

 

What thoughts are in the skipper's head as it pauses momentarily in the sun? Does an insect have thoughts? What is it seeing as it rests, exposed, above the foliage?

 

Does the Monarch feel its worn-out wings laboring against the air? Does it understand that it is nearing the end of its life, and feel an urgency to complete whatever lepidopteran life events that remain? Or is it simply looking for that next sweet hit of nectar, proboscis unfurling in anticipation?

I don't know. Scientists perhaps have some ideas. I can imagine, but these little nervous systems and sensory organs are so utterly foreign to ours, and imagination so constrained by our human experiences and expectations, that these brief, one-sided moments of observation will have to suffice.