New Scientist. Is it really true that the harder you work, the sooner you die? If you are a bumblebee, says an Australian biologist, the answer is, yes.

Ralph Cartar, now at the Australian Museum in Sydney, studied Canadian bumblebees (Bombus melanopygus). He found that workers that make the most foraging trips die earlier than their more slothful peers. Their wings simply wear out (Journal of Animal Ecology, vol 61, p 225).

It rained all night long. Here in the high desert, even where we are at 7,000 feet and in the foothills of the Pecos, that's an unusual night.

I woke up several times, pulling the goose down comforter up to my nose, peering out the windows I'd left thrown wide open the better to enjoy the weather. A cold breeze blew through the windows. I could hear the rain hissing outside. It wandered around my back yard like a silver ghost up to no good.

I worried about the horses, although they are getting their winter coats. I worried the most about the little bees. Jack Bauer has engineered a pretty incredible insulation system for their hives, but we won't be strapping those onto their houses until mid-November, at least that's our best guess now. I did not worry about the tenacious heeler dogs snoring at the foot of the bed. Our 12-year-old daughter did appear at one point throughout the night, to let me know that the rain was keeping her up. Indeed. We are desert dwellers.

Early this morning, I go down to take a look. The horses are fine. Muddy. A little cranky. Angry at me because I've had the audacity to show up half an hour late. And the wild bees, the Carniolans, and the Italians are all involved in their usual early morning activity.

The guards, every morning that I've been sitting nearby to observe, unceremoniously drag the bodies of their dead hive members to the front stoop and kick them off. Pitch them off, actually. Where they are carted off by dung beatles and other scavengers and eaten with great relish, I suppose.

No niceties here in the bee world, thank you very much. I've come to think of mornings observing bees as "Bring Out Your Dead!" Just like Monty Python, yes. I find myself smirking occasionally, in spite of myself. Because apparently I have a twisted sense of humor, even when it comes to what I'm beginning to see as some of the most precious of god's creatures. Bees are not always cute, they are about, actually, as far removed as one could get from Walt Disney. But then most things worth having and being a part of are not adorable all the time. It's the whole yin and yang thing that makes life interesting. The dark and the light, with a spot of the opposite in each.

The done in bees I saw piled up on the front stoops this morning might have died from the cold overnight, done in by the spectre of rain. Or as I've been reading recently, and as I've observed on some of the more industrious members of my hives, their little wings just wear out, and then they ... expire.

Funny, when I get down or kind of tired these days, as I am now a bona fide bee keeper, I think of myself as having my wings wearing out. Just a bit. Every now and then we all get a little thin. And then I surprise myself by still being able to take flight.

I saw a couple of Jack Rabbits while I was out there this morning near the bee hive too.