Homesteading Middles: The Bee Swarm

In February 2020 my partner took a beekeeping course. In March 2020 we built the bee boxes (painting them in the garage as snow drifted down, I remember thinking that summer would never come). In June 2022 we had our first swarm - evidence of a bursting bustling hive.

We noticed during a very hot weekend the entire front of the boxes were covered with bees cooling themselves down (the term is bearding). We wondered if it was too hot and crowded inside the wooden boxes. That Monday we got our answer. I looked out the window and there was a buzzing, whirling, maelstrom around one of the apple trees - a swarm.

Over the course of the next 15 minutes the whirling slowed. The bees coalesced around one of the branches. They formed the shape of a heart and stayed there.

All afternoon we watched them. Warily we crept closer and closer to the swarm. The bees were tucked on top of each other, warm and wiggling and very alive.

It felt very humbling to be so close to such wildness. Thrilling to be close to the potential of so many stings - like dancing on a precipice.

That evening I donned a bee suit for the first time to shake the branch into the waiting box below. The industrious creatures were affronted to be dislodged from the apple branch - but quickly settled into the new home - after all, it was just their size and there was already honey in certain of the combs!

I am in awe of these creatures. Bees dance directions to water sources. Bees change culotte colors every time they visit new pollen sources. Bees excrete sweetness in honey and wax. It is an honor to have their energy with us.

On their land. Our land. The land.

The land of The Good.

Thank you bees.*

*I am feeling very confronted with the nomenclature of “my land.” It is not my land. Yes, we have a piece of paper with our names on it and a number for the land. If you look it up in the tax records, we pay property tax on the land. But it doesn’t belong to us. The land belongs to itself, belongs to the moist frogs, the circling hawks, the coiling snakes, the scampering chipmunks, the hopping robins, the flitting hummingbirds, the buzzing bees, the robust honeysuckle, the majestic oaks, the adolescent stewartias, the baby maples, the crawling strawberries, the climbing hops, the burrowing carrots, the wiggling worms. (to name a few).

This feels like one of the more tragic both/ands of life. Where my Global North conditioning smacks into what my heart sings.