I had a rather strange encounter with a honey bee recently. It’s behaviour still puzzles me.

A few weeks ago I was sitting on our back veranda enjoying the morning sun on a coolish day and partaking of my morning cup of coffee. I also had a good book to read and all was right with the world.

My enjoyment of the day, the coffee and the book was rudely interrupted by a buzzing bee. It came up close to my coffee mug on the table, hovering only millimetres from the bright blue flowers painted on it. The bee did several close circuits of the mug and decided that the flowers weren’t the genuine sort and with no prospect of a feed.

It then proceeded to hover as close as several centimetres from my face, as if checking to see if I might be a source of nectar. It did this for about ten seconds before flying off to more promising places.

Perhaps it was chastising me for not having real flowers on my coffee mug.