It occurred to me that the bees are beginning to resent the white suits. So today I took the risk and opened up the frisky hive without one. First, I hammered a bunch of frames together while listening people reminisce about the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980. I popped in the plastic foundations and then I took off the two top boxes of the hive which had no bees and put on a queen excluder before replacing them with boxes of full frames. Now I feel much better about the whole thing and they can get back to work. It was warm and sunny at 1 pm and they were going with gusto. I'm worried about the other hive. We think they might be queenless, but they were going pretty well today too. Now the clouds have come back already.
A bee wants to build a hive, sustain a hive, build a life around a queen. It's just us stupid humans that get in the way!!!! We are part of nature, but we separate ourselves from it and interfere with it, trying to make their life fit into our egotistical view of the way we want our lives to be. This struggle became very personalized and internal with me these two past weeks. It's been a profound experience. I like learning from other people's mistakes better than learning from my own! J joked about beekeeping being like having children--these past two weeks, that's certainly been true, especially when you have a hive with a rebel buzz. Today I sat and thought about our two children--how different they are and wondered what kind of future they will have. Que sera sera.
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