A nine-year-old girl has gone viral after rescuing and nursing a bee back to health using honey and self-made motivational posters.

Willow McMurray found the bee lying on a piece of wood “on its back” at her family’s allotment in Auchendinny, a small village in Glencorse near Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland, on Sunday.

As the bee looked “very weak”, Willow acted quickly to try to give it the best chance of survival.

“I grabbed a container labelled chicken drumsticks and then I grabbed my little shovel and scooped it in,” the youngster, who lives with her family in Colinton, Edinburgh, told the PA news agency.

“I gave it the option of honey or sugar water, but it just chose the honey and not the sugar water.

“I did actually manage to pet the bee without it trying to attack me.”

In order to give the bee the strength to fight for its life, Willow also made it some motivational posters, with the words “You can do this” and “Keep going” on them, alongside images of bees.

She said the idea behind the posters “popped out of nowhere”.

“I just felt I should try and make this bee something to keep it energised,” Willow added.

The action seemed to have worked as shortly after they were made, the bee flew away, much to the youngster’s dismay as she had hoped to keep it as a pet, with plans to build it a terrarium, a transparent glass container.

She called it Honey during the time she spent with it, even though it was “not even a honeybee”.

Willow’s mother Anouska Curzon, 46, marketing and student recruitment lead at Scotland’s Rural College, posted about her daughter’s heroic act on X, which has been viewed by more than one million people.

Many have also left comments, including “You’ve broken the internet”, “You have such a good kid” and some have made bee puns such as “Don’t stop Bee-leaving” and “Bee brave! beelieve in yourself!”

Willow said: “I was really surprised that there were that many people that had found out about my bee.”

Ms Curzon added: “(Willow) loves drawing and making comic books and posters, so this was something that was very Willow to have done.

“It was just really sweet and we were just really overwhelmed by the reaction to the story.

“It’s gone very much global and everyone seems to think it’s adorable – somebody even described it as a timeline cleanser.”