“She flies a little bit but then she falls,” Tiana said in the video. She knew the only way the bee would make it out of the sand was if [Tiana] helped save her.
As Tiana attempted to show Bumble leaves to step onto, the little bee seemed to show no signs of leaving the comfort of Tiana’s hand. Soon, their friendship blossomed. Eventually, Bumble found a home on a sunflower owned by Tiana and explored the tiny world around it. The bee would venture out but find its way back to the safety of Tiana’s hand.
“There was this connection and this safe feeling of ‘we can trust each other,’” she said.
According to Mental Floss, bumblebees flap their wings at a rate of 200 times per second which can be compared to the RPM of some motorcycle engines. Along with that, they have to eat almost constantly.
“A bumblebee with a full stomach is only ever about 40 minutes from starvation,” scientist Dave Goulson wrote in his book, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees. In other words, Bumble might not have made it much longer without flying, if it weren’t for Tiana.
Just as the two found their rhythm, Bumble’s time with Tiana came to an end. “She walked to the end of my finger, opened her wings, and flew away and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, she just flew away’. The next thing you know, she makes a U-turn and comes all the way back. I could not believe what I was seeing.”
The video was originally posted on TikTok back in June and garnered 7.2 million views. The second detailed Tiana’s — who goes by the name @tiamia10987 on the platform — second day with the bee, and the third showed Bumble’s first attempts to fly.
By the fourth and final video, Bumble said goodbye. That video amassed just over 600,000 views. However, it’s The Dodo’s Twitter post that thrust the heart-warming story into the spotlight with all four parts of the love story sewn into one.
Tiana’s TikTok page shows her love of other living creatures, too. She previously befriended spiders, ladybugs, sand crabs, and more.
