Leafcutter bees are what scientist call solitary creatures. Laymen call it loneliness. And that, perhaps, is why they rarely sting. They have no one to protect. They don't form colonies or make honey. While most species of bees live under monarchy, every female leafcutter bee is a queen. Having farmed the fields they pollinate, it has fallen upon me, their deepest admirer, to tell of their simple lives.

A newborn bachelor leafcutter bee will use his one to two weeks of life searching for a female so he can do his part to perpetuate the life cycle. But he will never meet his children, won’t be there to kiss them goodnight or keep them safe in a thunderstorm. I wonder if he knows that, if he realizes he will die before midsummer comes. What about his new lover? Does she know his fate? Shortly after the male has done his job, he dies. The only evidence of his life will be his offspring.

The widowed female bee will leave his side to gather pollen in which to nest her eggs. She is an artist in her busyness, creating lacey trimmings along the edges of leaves and flower petals from the alfalfa field that is her world. She tucks the resulting blankets into the bee-size holes my dad, the farmer, drilled in planks of wood. The moist leaves and petal pieces will dry to form swaddles for her children. When Mother has finished the silky beds, she lays a larva in each one. Oh, to be a sleepy bee, swaddled in a cocoon of purple flower petals! The process is tirelessly repeated 35-40 times to form a cradle for each offspring. Her labor is her glory. As with Father, she too will die before her children awaken in spring.

When warmth returns months later, a tiny new orphan bee awakens from hibernation. She eats the pollen in her bed, unaware of the One who left it. As she opens the leaf door to her new world, she greets the sun like a prayer, a plea for answers. Who is she? Why is she? The brisk June morning keeps her from flying, so she joins the hundreds of drowsy bees stumbling parentless, helpless on the ground. But Father and Mother are with her. Pieces of Them flow through her tiny veins.

It is in this gentle loneliness that she will crawl onto my outstretched finger and look into my inquisitive eyes. I will gaze back at her fuzzy self and whisper, "hello new friend."

I cannot help but feel that like this bee, I have Parents I have not seen. Divine Beings who placed me in a field of purple flowers, who's influence I feel but cannot see. I wonder if Father sees me the way I do new bees. So small, so fragile, a little dazed. Before I opened my eyes into this new world, did Mother hold me tight? Did she weep, knowing she could not come with me? When I'm lonely and They feel far, I think of the cocoon of purple petals. I look for evidence of Them in things like bees. And every so often there comes a time when I feel my Maker's touch, holding me, greeting me, warming me. I find evidence of Them in my world and sometimes in myself. In the way I hold this baby bee on my finger before placing her on my shoulder. And like the bee, I linger near the touch of God until the morning air is warm enough for me to fly into the field.