In early 1996, I was shopping for doctoral programs in quantitative psychology and psychometrics. I applied to 5 schools in the US, got in to all of them with varying funding packages, and then it came down to deciding which one to pick. I visited two of them: one in Virginia and one in North Carolina. At the latter, I met the big guns and all the grad students in the program, and sat in on a few classes. While in a few of the classes, I noticed some of the students were practically quivering with excitement in their seats like 7-year-olds as equations were bandied about, chalk flying. Don’t get me wrong, I love math, and I love solving equations. But I savour, rather than quiver over, proofs and polynomials… The students in Virginia were tamer, and I ended up going there, but that is another story altogether…

But back to the excitement factor. I finally discovered, years later, that the one thing that does send me off into 7-year-old wonderment, and dare I say, ‘quiverment’, is bees. Seeing them is pure awesomeness for me. I can’t explain. One woman’s equation is another woman’s bees.

One thing that I was excited about in coming back to China was catching some bee action. There is a different species of honeybee here – the Eastern honeybee or Apis cerana. I keep a photo gallery of bees from my travels as well as contributions from site visitors. I have a few from my time in Hunan province. Sadly, in the 5 months in 2011 and the 2 months in 2012 I spent in China’s tropical Hainan, I only saw bees once, and I didn’t have my camera with me. But today on a walk in northern Nanjing, I not only came across a massive and impressive spread of urban community gardens (which I’ve posted on separately), but I spotted a honeybee picking up some autumn nectar as well as some pollen. Check her out below: