Thirsty Bees and Rescued Snails

Yesterday and today have been the first times I’ve ever observed bees drinking water. I was out in the yard with Lena yesterday and noticed a few bees flying around the water fountain. As I approached (cautiously, so as not to frighten or anger them) I was able to watch them land on the edge of the fountain and drink. After a while, each bee would take off and either come in for a second landing or leave. This afternoon I saw them hovering around the water fountain again. I hope they won’t bring too many of their hive-mates as I really don’t want huge numbers of bees in my backyard, for our safety. But it’s interesting nonetheless to watch them at the fountain.

As for the snails, at work there are now two containers with a mini-ecosystem consisting of aquatic plants, snails and tiny fish. When we came in yesterday morning we found that the water in the third container was very cloudy and that there was a strange sort of white film covering the small rocks on the bottom. The fish were evacuated into another one of the containers and then we wondered what to do with the snails. The water smelled foul and so my boss and I went up to the top of the building, where there are some large planters, and dumped the stinky water along with the rocks and the aquatic plant. She took some of the snails in her hand and I took the last one (after removing a jelly-like unidentified thing that was stuck to its shell) and brought them back down. We thought about putting them in quarantine in a different container for a few days, but then figured we’d put them in with the other snails. Today they all looked fine and everyone was active, so we’re hoping that whatever happened yesterday will not happen again, but we will keep an eye on our office pets.