I was walking along Omaha Beach (45 mins each way), this being my second serious walk this year. 

Occasionally looking down at the sand in front of me, I saw a small movement with a trail following behind it. I stopped and bent over the thing. It was a gorgeous honey bee dragging itself through the wet muddy sand.  I naturally thought ‘poor thing you won’t make it’. So being a true WOPper I picked it up, but then thought ‘what do I do with you now?’ The poor wee thing hardly moved in my palm, must be exhausted. I let it rest and instead of cleaning itself, it started walking. It walked up my palm and fell off the edge, I picked it up, obviously delirious or drunk from the New Year’s Eve party!!!! Keeping on my serious beach walk I let my new mate carry on walking, over my palm, onto the other one, across the top of my hand then onto the other hand but again it fell off. I decided this time, that the wind was too strong for it to keep its balance on me so being a nice person I picked it up again but this time I sheltered it from the wind with my other hand.

Well that was a mistake because Bee was walking up, over, thru, then further up my arm and let me tell you, all this is time consuming, comical, tickling and very hard to concentrate on while trying not to apply too much pressure in case I got stung and dam it, my arms were getting tired!!!  

Gosh what a dummy I am, I should have found a safe place to drop off Bee, but where? Can't put Bee back on the sand the tide was coming in, there are no trees anywhere near, there’s no rocks either..... so walking on and on with my serious walk, I kept looking for a safe Bee place.  

Bee and I walked hand over hand, arm over arm for 20 minutes.  Definitely tired arms now.  Finally I spotted Bee’s new home, it was a large tree stump, way up high above the high tide mark. Perfect. I walked up over the soft sand and placed Bee gently down. But just thinking about Bee now, I forgot to say goodbye and wish Bee well on its next journey.

Bees are diminishing in their numbers, we must look after them or we’ll run out of runny honey.

 
Happy WOPping.

Kathy B