One summer afternoon a couple of years ago, I slid a chair into the sunlight filtering in through the sliding glass door of the living room -- a better spot to work that particular day. While typing away on my laptop, I noted a single bee a couple of inches outside the screen, hovering at about my seated eye level.

This wasn't the usual brown and yellow honeybee variety. It was one of those mini bees, darker in color and less angular and technical looking. I've noticed this type of bee before. It always seems to float in some random spot mid-air rather than absorb itself with the task of robbing nectar from flowers like its compadres. These bees have the habit of facing forward, aiming straight at me, and bob languidly, vertically.

This particular one behaved the same way. I felt its eyeballs on me (dozens of them I supposed). It seemed a little heavy for its size, so that when it swayed, it bounced back and forth sloppily, like a marshmallow stuck to the end of a pipecleaner. Sometimes it appeared almost motionless; then it would shoot up or down about a foot, always tracking along my silhouette, and always oriented toward me, observing.

This sounds odd, but it stayed there in front of the glass, in front of me, for over 2 hours, and maybe 3, though I almost doubt that could have happened when I reflect back. It never landed on the screen, and never turned its body sideways. It crossed my mind that it was monitoring me, feeding calculations to a mother bee elsewhere, or to the government. Even so, I somehow felt comfortable with that thought, a willing participant in its grand data-gathering plan.

I kept working, and there were short spurts where it did seem to disappear from view, but whenever I looked for it again that day, there it was.

Individual data bees periodically return for updates when I'm out and about, though they never stay long; I suppose I've been tapped, much like ancient zinfandel vines that eventually lose steam, having already given away their bounty to generations. But I smile when occasionally I see someone else get that strange sensation that they're being watched and shoo away a tiny, nosy, out of place bee.