Country Mouse Monday: tiny teachers

Sunflowers & bees: this is what you see as soon as you slide open our front-gate and step onto our farmlet.  Sunflowers everywhere, and all of them volunteers, not a single one deliberately planted.  They're not necessarily in the most convenient of spots -- in the middle of a bed, now propped up but still leaning under the weight of their great seed-laden heads.  The bees love them, so we keep them even when they're a smidge inconvenient, making us limbo along garden paths, duck under their buzzing faces to reach the tomatoes or the greens.

The bees love them, so we keep them.

It's the best time in the garden and the craziest, too.  The bees are busy gathering everything they can, more aware than even we of how the days are growing shorter and cooler. Winter is coming.  

The Italians -- that is, our hive at home -- has made an impressive leap forward in population and nectar storage.  We'd been feeding them through about a month ago, trying to give them a leg up, help this new package of bees get established.  Yesterday's check of the hive showed that they're doing great, strong in numbers, and finally the frames are heavy with honey-in-the-making.  Good girls!

There's the Queen to the left of that funny long shadow (cast by Joe's hive tool), indicated by the red arrow.  See how much bigger she is, darker, shinier than her offspring.  Looks like she is just about to drop that big abdomen into an empty cell, deposit an egg there, then move on to the next and so on 1,500 times a day for her entire life.  

It kinda sucks to be Queen.

Really she's just the Mother of them all, the Chief Ovopositor, if you will.  Sure, she's critically important to the survival of the hive, but she's just one part of this multi-bee'ed organism.  She is in service to the collective, as are the workers and the drones, too.  Except that she rarely, maybe only once or twice a lifetime, uses those wings of hers.

To the right of the Queen and up a little, you can see bee larvae.  These babies may be the most important in the colony's life cycle as they are the ones who, once hatched, will over-winter with the colony, living for three months where their summer sisters only last about 6 weeks.  We had some doubts about this colony, about the efficacy of this Queen, but we're feeling more confident now.

But we'll keep checking up on them, just to be sure.  That's our purposeful work.

It's so peaceful to be in the hive looking at bees.  Wreathed in smoke, I am calmed along with them.  Where in past seasons I've been a bit jumpy, reticent almost, now I'm slow and happy, moving frames, checking both sides, taking my time and observing long and deep.  Lovingly and without the fear that plagued me earlier.  

I am quietly learning from tiny teachers.

Opening the hive is like lifting the lid off a treasure chest sometimes, a cartoon-like blast of gleaming goldness streaming out.  Or like that bit in Pulp Fiction when Vincent Vega opens the briefcase, and his face is illuminated by the contents.  The shine of what's inside that box gets all over us every time.  We are dusted, like the workers, with the goodness of everything growing around us.  

It's such a privilege to see what the bees are up to, to see the Queen, see the fall babies, to get inside the buzz and hum of the hive mind for a few moments on the weekend. And to be reminded to do the work, make our lives so sweet that, if you lifted the lid off, you too would be dazzled, dusted with gold.

XX