What Bumblebees Know About Your Bullshit

There’s this old myth that scientists once said bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly. It’s bullshit – some guy in the 1930s did bad math at a dinner party and we’ve been repeating it ever since. But here’s what is true about bumblebees: they don’t give a shit about what you think is possible.

Watch one sometime. They’re not elegant. They bump into things. They fly like someone threw a cotton ball with wings. Their whole situation looks wrong – tiny wings, chunky body, all that fuzzy weight. They’re the minivans of the insect world, and they’re absolutely thriving.

While I’m over here paralyzed by whether I should send that email or take that class or have that conversation, the bumblebee is face-deep in a flower, covered in pollen, living its best life. It’s not wondering if it deserves the nectar. It’s not comparing itself to butterflies. It’s not having an existential crisis about its purpose. It just flies to the next flower.

We love to make nature profound, but maybe the lesson isn’t that deep. The bee doesn’t “embody mindfulness” or “practice presence.” It’s just too busy being a bee to worry about being a bee. Meanwhile, I spent twenty minutes this morning debating whether I was qualified to write something I’ve already been asked to write. The bumblebee would have written it, submitted it, and been pollinating its third garden by then.

The bee doesn’t know it’s teaching me anything. It’s just doing what needs doing with the equipment it has. Tiny wings and all. Maybe that’s enough of a lesson: Stop calculating whether you can fly. You’re already in the air.

The Buzz of “Why?”

I watch a bee in the garden,

it doesn’t stop mid-flight

to wonder if its wings make sense,

It doesn’t ask: “Why me?”

It just moves, 

bloom to bloom,

like the world is enough…

 

I’ve wasted years on whys.

Why this? Why me? Why now?

As if the answer

would make it weigh less.

 

The bee carries nothing extra, 

not wisdom, not faith, 

just an absence of questions that don’t matter.

While I tangle myself in threads of meaning,

it’s already three gardens over.

 

Maybe that’s it, 

not that trust beats certainty,

but that moving beats circling the same damn question.

 

When doubt creeps in,

I think of the bee, 

because wings beating faster

than thoughts ever be.

 

Bee doesn’t wonder why the flower is there,

it just lands.

(2019 © Julia Delaney)

I get it, though. The calculating probably kept you alive once. Made you careful when careful mattered. The bee never had a parent who criticized its flying style, never got rejected from flower school, never learned that wrong moves have consequences. But here’s the thing about survival strategies: they don’t know when the war is over. The bumblebee doesn’t carry armor it doesn’t need… and maybe, neither do you.

Be Alive 🌱
Love ❤️, Julia

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