In Search Of Warmth
Lately I’ve been feeling a lot like the peacock… someone from an exotic land struggling to make it through the harsh reality of the cold; minute by minute, day by day. Much like the peacock (I suspect, anyway) I was born here, and though I feel as if I have been transplanted from some warmer time and place, this is all I really know, and this is where I’ll stay.
The cold has been relentless. Days maxing out at temperatures in the high twenties, nights dipping dangerously low into the single digits, and for weeks on end. I wander about the house, cranky, layered in 4 and 5 shirts, plotting my escape… any escape. Then, I take a step onto the back porch and remember that some have it worse, like Rocky. He is the rain barrel fish that we rescued back in November. There he is, alone, at the bottom of an almost completely frozen bucket of water, waiting the return of warmer weather. On days when I fear that the bucket has frozen solid, I set it inside the kitchen to thaw a bit. Then, when the ice begins to float, I give the bucket a shake and watch him jump, life streaming through his little body if only for a second. Before he thaws completely, I return him to the arctic back porch to live out the rest of his hibernation.
Today, however, today was a special day. We had all been talking about it for a week. Today the temperature reached into the 40’s. Words like ‘warm’, ’spring like’ and ‘balmy’ were bantered about. Blankets were hung on the line, Ice was chipped off of the driveway, and the fireplace took a day of rest.
Today was a special day for other reasons. Today was the day that I bought my bees.
You may recall a few posts back that Brian had stumbled upon a family that was moving to Italy and needed to sell their Italian honeybees. Well, today was the day that I drove out to check out the equipment, visit the bees and determine whether or not the purchase was to be made.
Truth be told, the decision had already been made. The class had been taken, the club had been joined and the books had been purchased. And if there was any doubt after all of that, the other night I watched the movie, “The Secret Life Of Bees”. I was in love hook, line and stinger. (I know, that’s bad.)
This morning, buoyed by thoughts of a sunnier time, I prepared to meet the current owners of the bees. It was only in retrospect, as I was driving the hour between our farms, that I realized lathering myself in my new Caribbean scented lotion, though deliciously reminiscent of the sun, was perhaps an error in judgement as I was about to greet my new stinging and swarming associates.
I met Andy and Heather and tried hard to listen as they explained what equipment they were selling and how last year’s season went, all the while trying to stifle my excitement to just greet the bees. Despite the fact that it was still winter, the warmth of the day was a good indicator that they might be a tad bit lively and viewable. I expected the bees to be like my daughters when they have woken up from a nap; confused, wobbly and shy, if not cranky.
After learning about the endeavor that I was about to undertake (including the fact that last year’s harvest — their first and only harvest — brought in 90 pounds of honey!), we trucked through 1 1/2 foot snow coverage to the hive. The hive consists of 2 deep wooden boxes (brood boxes) where the bees spent all summer building up stores of honey to survive the winter. On top of the boxes is a feeder box filled with sugar water. This additional food is to assist the bees when the honey stores get low in the late fall and early spring, before the pollen is available once again.
Andy popped the top off of the hive and anxiously we all looked in.
Dead bees. That is what we saw. Bees that looked as if someone had shouted, “Pencils down!” and they were still madly circling ‘c’ in the multiple choice section. Dead in their tracks.
I don’t have pictures because I didn’t want to weird out Andy and Heather. It is probably better this way anyway. It was a pretty sad sight.
Since this was the top box, and there was still a box underneath, we contemplated taking the top box off to check to see if there were alive bees at the bottom. I put my ear on the top box and listened with all of my might.
(Funny, it didn’t occur to me, until later anyway, that I was not only sticking my ear into a box of dead bees, but that I was also sticking my ear into what was potentially a box that still had ALIVE bees in it. And people wonder why we call ourselves The Accidental Farm.)
I thought that I heard a very faint hum, but with the wind almost howling around us, it was too difficult to be sure. Nervous that something dreadful was happening in their hive, Andy and Heather began to unwrap the insolation jacket and take off the top box. Unfortunately it was frozen to the bottom and without tools there was no way to look inside. Not wanting to create a problem by exposing the tiny creatures that might still be hunkered down for warmth, we decided to leave them alone.
At the time, I was sure that the bees were alright, just buried at the bottom for warmth. Now, while writing this blog and looking at pictures of dead bees, I wonder if I might be wrong. I’m alright with the fact that I might not inherit Andy and Heather’s bees, just the equipment. However I’m not alright with the fact that a society might be gone, one that two people grew to love in less than a year. And in the end, there is no way to know what in fact went wrong or how to prevent it from happening again.
But, I suppose this is a fact of farming. Farming is about working within the cycle of life. Clearly the point is to try your best to help life thrive, but if you’re working with life then you have to accept death. And just as we have to accept the frozen face of winter, it is not forever and there are moments when we can turn ourselves to the sun and remember that life will return once again.
