The bees were perhaps the most interesting part of the summer trip as I look back on it now. My mother had become a beekeeper, in the lucid lunacy of finally settling into retirement, with the carte blanche you are provided as such, allowing you to do things you’ve always wanted to do, but had never thought of actually doing. Like being the big queen for two new little ones. Two new little queens and thousands of their workers inside two white boxes stuffed in the corner of the sprawling wooded open space my parents shared with their neighbor.
Mom sat and glue-gunned wedding veils on baseball caps after dinner with the girls. It seemed a healthy mix of ingenious and ineffectual to me, but I was far from a bee expert and even farther from a bee-hat making one. Although allowing Lilah access to the hot glue gun made me call into question the wisdom of the entire endeavor.
“Do you want to sweep some veil on the back?” I asked, looking at the bare back of the ball cap. Didn’t look too protective to me.
Dirty look from Mom. Quickly glued veil on the back.
“Rick says that he’s only really got stung when they get trapped,” she added and moved on to the next one.
“And bees don’t want to sting you. They die when they sting you!” Lilah added, gleefully smearing a lake of hot glue on her hat, whipping her hand in the air to dry some burning glue left on her fingers.
“That’s right, Lilah! And tomorrow we get to see them all. Rick will be here to help. Rick the ‘bee guru.’” Their Nana explained.
I’d never met a bee guru before. Well, once I met a young, Californian bee collector who was likely a bee guru, but that was by accident and I hadn’t realized that he was probably a bee guru until he was already gone.
Sophie and Lilah love all creatures, except rats and ants, of course. I have done my best to foster admiration and compassion for poor bees, bees that are met with screams and squashing and a whole modern world of pervasive pesticides aiming to take out the noble little workers. Which has been hard for me considering that I mowed over a hive of them as a teenager and was stung a few dozen times as I sprinted down the street, stripping my clothes off and slapping myself like an escaped madman. But even then I knew that they were all making the ultimate sacrifice, and if I hadn’t run over their hive with my growling machine of death I would have been fine.
It was still with some trepidation that I went outside to watch. Rick was talking as Mom loaded the smoker, an odd little lamp-shaped device she was loading with strips of burlap and lighting with Dad’s cigar torch, curling semi-sweet wisps of smoke around their conversation.
Rick was old Iowa through and through. Stoic, gruff, no nonsense. 70 odd years of sun, soil, and bees. He was tall and thin, with a pot belly and a bit of a stoop, but still seemed to stand straight and certain. Not proud or egotistical, but sure of the world and his place in it. In the world of plants and bees and the soil of Iowa.
“Alright, now Kitty let’s get this done. You keep the young’ns inside for now we’re fixin to make ‘em pretty mad.”
The girls pressed their faces on the sliding glass again, this time at their Nana’s and this time watching domestic type bees being wrangled by an old Iowan instead of a young Californian. Waaayyy out across the green field back by the sprawling tree line where the off-white boxes lay next to the pool of sugar water Mom had laid out. I went onto the porch to see if I could tell what they were doing. They looked busy and Mom even looked a little frantic. She caught me as if by maternal magic and motioned me out. Great. Really hoping I could be of assistance, being completely ignorant of this dangerous activity. I borrowed Sophie’s bridal ball cap and marched out to the melee. It was supposed to rain again soon, like every day that summer, but the sun was out for now. Thunderheads loomed in the East, and there was so much water on the ground and in the air that you could see steam rising from everything even in the late morning heat.
When I finally got up there, everything looked like a bad idea, poorly laid out. An entire hive gutted and strewn about the grass. Rick was taking shelf after shelf out of the first white box. Slowly on his third one now, teeming with angry bees that crawled over his hands and arms. A cloud of bees in the air, a lake on the ground.
“Well this one looks real nice right here. I’d give this one a B+,” he said, pulling it all the way out and flipping it. Thousands of workers crawled all over, some taking flight but most roiling in a liquid mass. He stopped for a few seconds and slowly, ever so slowly, brushed a few dozen bees off of his hand with a trowel.
“Here Matt I need more smoke. Can you fill it and light the burlap?” Mom asked and I happily walked away from the hive. This was all amazing, but still more frightening than anything. Like hanging out with a bunch of drunk bikers at a biker bar, hoping you don’t accidentally say the wrong thing or look the wrong way to make all of them decide to destroy you at once.
“Just stay away from that there hive opening and you’ll be alright,” Rick said, waving at me without a glance. I hopped back away from the little hole of a runway they were checking in and out of and went to the box to load up the smoker.
Yeah sure right, the smoke makes bees calmer, I thought. Sounds like a ruse of a rumor. I’m not falling for it. I grabbed it from her and loaded the strips in the strange lamp, lighting it with a thin strip of lit butane, shutting it, and then pumping air it into it until the burlap smoke flew out of it like spores. I’ll just give her this placebo device and watch from down the hill.
‘Oh, this is just what ya want right here. Look at all those capped cells. Give this one a…A-,” Rick complimented and almost smiled for the first time and Mom looked happy.
“Here Matt, smoke these bees would you?” she asked me.
I wanted to say no, but apparently things were being graded by the Guru now. I was nothing if not a conscientious student so I smoked my way towards the A- hive with all the caps in their ass. It didn’t really seem to change how they were behaving but no one was getting stung so I was probably doing at least an A- kind of job.
“Where is the queen?” I asked, and Rick looked at me with a faint gap-toothed smile. Like, aren’t you cute and what a dumb question even though there are no dumb questions.
“Well hell, I dunno. But we can tell for sure she’s here and busy on accounta all them capped cells there,’ he pointed with his right hand, three bees wandering on it, holding the frame up with his other hand to show the class. “You almost never see the queen. You just see her handiwork and know she’s about.” Bee guru Rick laying down the knowledge.
“The caps are the eggs from the queen. More smoke right here,” she pointed and I walked closer, fumigating the swirling creature. I’m a good smoker.
“Worker and drone larva,” he added, and slowly put the frame back in its slot, brushing the bees off his hand and arm at the end so calmly, like perfect slow motion. I smoked him for good measure. Don’t think he liked that.
“What do the drones do?” I asked.
“They just eat and mate,” he responded and pulled out the next grate.
“I had a friend like that in college,” I responded. Dirty, hissing look from Mom. No response from guru Rick. Tough room.
“Another good one here, Kitty. Give this one a…B+,” he said, the emperor of bees giving another thumbs up.
They really were beautiful. And many of them looked different when you stared at them up close for a while. I took my bee cap off to really see. I was only a couple feet away from them and they had taken no notice of me whatsoever. Really amazing, like seeing the working insides of a watch or a living organism as it operates.
“How come some of them are darker than others? Like those ones with the big black stripes there? Are those the drones?” I asked and smoked them all just to be sure.
“Nope. Ya see there are different races of bees just like humans. There’s Eye-talians and negros…” he trailed off. As if those were the only two important ones he could think of at the moment. And one of them was a word I hadn’t heard for a long time.
“And Philipinos?” I asked as innocently as I could. Another hiss from Mom and more silent work from Rick. I pity whoever was gonna follow me.
Mom shut me up with a chuck of honeycomb she pried off of the poor bee’s work with a flat trowel. I chewed it slowly, squishing the sweetness of all the flowers in the earth away from the tasteless wax. Just like the chunks I used to have as a kid from the tiny farmer coop, growing up way out in the country. So delicious and fragrant and sweet and then suddenly gone. Just hard tasteless wax left to spit out.
‘Well dadgummit!” Rick said, as exasperated as he probably ever gets. He stood all the way up, scratched his head, and stuck his little pot belly out. He was into the second hive now, holding onto a tray that only had a few dozen bees crawling around it.
“Not good, huh Rick?” Mom said and came over closer.
“After a few weeks this should be covered with caps and bees. I wander if yer queen took off,” he said. “Prolly did. Might find a feral one in here somewhere lets have us a look.”
“That’s a C minus. Dadgummit. Oh there’s some queen. Prolly not even yours,” he said taking her out with his trawl and smashing her in the grass. So quick I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of her. I smoked the general area and stepped back quickly.
He saw me back up. “Don’t you worry son. That prolly wasn’t most ‘a their queen anyways. Kitty got another queen coming. Sposed ta be here tomorrah?” He asked as he wiped the rest of the queen into the grass and went to take out another tray of underachieving bees.
“Yes. Tomorrow morning,” she said and helped him put back the last tray and take out the next.
“Hmp. D minus. They inseminate that one before they sent her out?” He asked flipping the anemic tray over.
“No…?” Mom replied with a look as blank as mine.
Inseminate bees? How the hell do you do that?” I wanted to scream. The poor queen on her way in the mail. The travesties heaped upon her already.
“Dadgummit. They prolly didn’t then. That’s the problem, you bein a novice, nothing wrong with that, but you bein a novice not only you don’t know the answers but you don’t know the questions to ask. They should be artificially inseminatin’ them queens fore they get to you. Come with some of their own brood in their belly. More likely to make a hive for ya,” he finished. Rick put the last tray back in and stood over the reassembled boxes with his hands on his hips.
“That must be a hell of a laboratory,” I said.
“Matter a fact it is. I seen one a few years ago when I was pickin up a few queens for the Johnsons. Quite an operation they got goin now,” He said and strode slowly down the hill with Mom. “Now Kitty when that new queen comes you call me. We’ll do just like we did last time,” he said and trailed off to the house as I stood and watched the dazed workers climb in and out of their artificial nursery.
Seriously how the hell do you artificially inseminate a bee. We humans. Look out for us. We will dominate all species and fuck them both ways till Sunday just for the hell of it. You will be how we want you to be. Until you can’t anymore.
Now the new queen’s in the right box, belly pumped full of baby bees, and Mom’s the bee Guru in this neck of the wood. The girls are her minions, her two new little queens in their cute bee bridesmaids’ hats and they’re busy working those hives. I’m having a cigar on the porch in the sticky June afternoon remembering Rick. Rick the old Iowan bee guru. Stooped and straight and certain, dadgummit. You just see her handiwork and know she’s about. We’ll do just like we did last time.
I thought this experience would be one for print…loved it! Rick is an amazing character, in so many ways, and you captured him. PURE Iowa.
Wow. Did you ever capture that priceless morning. I had forgotten all of the conversation that went on, but you took it all in. Dadgummit.