Tag: hive

A Fragile Citadel

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…And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.

And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James Rosenberg from “The Wasps’ Nest”

The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
and with it came the heart, and in my hand

the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones
awoke and did their painful business.

I let the city drop upon the stones.
It split to its deep palaces and combs.
The secret heart was broken suddenly.
~Michael Schmidt — “Wasps’ Nest”

Over the years, we have had basketball-sized paper bald-faced hornet nests appear in various places on the farm. They hang from eaves or branches undisturbed as their busy citizens visit our picnics, greedily buzz our compost bin, shoot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lift the lid.  In short, their threat of using their weaponry control our moves during the summer. This year’s nest has been built to include some Golden Delicious apples in our apple tree.

This nest is the hornets’ nighttime respite for a few more weeks before a freeze renders them weak and paralyzed in slow motion.  This thing of unparalleled beauty on the outside harbors plenty of danger inside. I will not touch this fragile tissue-paper fortress with its beating buzzing hornet heart.

Let winter deal the devastating blow to disable them. 
As I am not in or of them, I cannot cast the first stone.

In a few short weeks, as the hornets sleep, the north winds will tear it free from its tight hold, bear it aloft in its lightness of being, and it will fall, crushed and broken.

Only then, its secret heart will be revealed and all that stings will be let go.

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For a Bee’s Experience

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!

~Emily Dickinson “The Bee”

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

~Li-Young Lee, last stanza of “From Blossoms” from Rose.

I try, as best I can, to see the world from a perspective other than my own:

Spending this week with our toddler grandson has helped me to look at things at the three foot rather than six foot level and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with how large everything appears.

I read opinions that differ considerably from my own so I can gain understanding and hopefully compassion for how others perceive the events of the world, even when I don’t and won’t agree.

And I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a bee – to leave my warm and cozy community to find the best sources of pollen, diving bum-deep into a plethora of colors and fragrances, from ‘blossom to blossom to impossible blossom.’

Bees have a life-preserving mission in the world – not only to sustain themselves and their hive, but pollinating millions of blooms, an essential task for the fruiting of the land. Now that is a purpose-driven life.

We are no different. Our reason to exist goes far beyond our self-preservation, or the preservation of everyone who looks like or thinks like we do, i.e. “hive-mind.” We were created to care for the rest of the world, by dipping into each beautiful and sacred thing that thrives here because of us, not despite us.

And that includes each other, as different as we look and think and act. Each of us a sweet impossible blossom.

New book available from Barnstorming — information on how to order it here

Meant to Be Sweet

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Who could need more proof than honey—

How the bees with such skill and purpose
enter flower after flower
sing their way home
to create and cap the new honey
just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning
raids the hive
shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth
bats away indignant bees
stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity
its taste of clover and wind
its metaphorical power:
don’t we yearn for a land of milk and honey?
don’t we call our loved ones “honey?”

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

Oh, who could need more proof than honey
to know that our world
was meant to be

and

was meant to be
sweet?
~Julie Cadwallader Staub “Joy” from Face to Face

Our dependency on the lowly bee
-to pollinate all the fruits and vegetables we need to thrive-
is lost in the threat of bee viruses and giant killer hornets and chemical sprays.

Our dependency on the bee
models how we are to be…

We too were placed here to service the created world
and make it sweeter and more fruitful.

Instead, always greedy, we demand more than the world can give
and we now wring our hands at our fate.

We were created from a profound spirit of sweetness
and still, and yet, and in grace,
we are forgiven for settling for sullen sourness.

Finding My Way Home

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Bees do have a smell, you know,
and if they don’t they should,
for their feet are dusted with spices
from a million flowers.”
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine


I studied bees, who were able
to convey messages through dancing
and could find their ways
home to their hives
even if someone put up a blockade of sheets
and boards and wire.
Bees had radar in their wings and brains
that humans could barely understand.
I wrote a paper proclaiming
their brilliance and superiority
and revised it at a small café
featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers
in silver honeypots
at every table.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from “Bees Were Better”

Suddenly a bee, big as a blackberry,
bumbles against my window, knocking
for attention. Rolling in azalea cups all morning,
she weaves in slow motion then hovers
like a helicopter, humming
to herself. The key, C major.
No black notes, no sharps, no flats.
Only naturals—the fan of her own wings,
the bliss of her own buzz.

She doesn’t practice.
She doesn’t have to. She knows.
To make honey, you follow the dance.
~Alice Friman  from “The Key”

I wish I had a homing device in my body that would bring me home no matter where I wander. I simply turn my face to the sun and my wings take me back there, even if I wasn’t paying attention to the dance of others and I’m off kilter or too stubborn to admit home is where I need to be.

After a summer of watching thousands of bees making a “bee-line” to home at night as if they are on a superhighway to their very own hive and honey cell, I need to be just as determined, just as committed, just as confident that I’m heading to where I belong.

The rest are waiting for me and have left the light on.


The Broken Secret Heart

barnstormingblog1 Comment
hiveaugust
waspnest10
waspnest3waspnest11
The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
and with it came the heart, and in my hand
the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones
awoke and did their painful business.
I let the city drop upon the stones.

It split to its deep palaces and combs.

The secret heart was broken suddenly.
~Michael Schmidt — “Wasps’ Nest”
hive2915
wasphive5
A thing of beauty outside
harbors danger and threat inside.
I can’t touch this tissue paper football nest
with its beating buzzing hornet hearts
yet the dwellers inside allow me
to admire their craftsmanship.In a few short weeks, as they sleep,
the north winds will tear it free from its tight hold,
bear it aloft in its lightness of being,
and it will fall, crushed, broken,
its secret heart revealed
and all that stings will be let go.
~EPG

waspnest2
hive9151
hiveclose
wasphive2
wasphive

nest2
last year’s nest, basketball-size

Like the Direction of Sunbeams

barnstormingblog2 Comments

beeswarm5148

A swarm of honey bees appeared, suddenly and without fanfare, on our old black walnut tree with the tree house. After dusk, a local bee keeper came to brush the majority of them into a cardboard box to take home to a new hive.

A bee swarm is an amazing single-minded organism of thousands of individuals intent on one purpose: survival of the queen to establish a new home for her safety and security, thus ensuring survival for all.  I am grateful they stopped off here at this farm for a bit of a respite, and wish them well under the nurture of a gentle apiarist who, for forty years, has loved, respected and honored bees by working for their well-being.

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
~Henry David Thoreau

beeswarm51410

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees…
~Leo Tolstoy

beeswarm2A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.
-An Old English Ditty

beeswarm5143

When the air is wine and the wind is free
and the morning sits on the lovely lea
and sunlight ripples on every tree
Then love-in-air is the thing for me

I’m a bee,
I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,
That’s me.

I wish to state that I think it’s great,
Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,

It’s the place to pair
With a bee.

If any old farmer can keep and hive me,
Then any old drone may catch and wife me;
I’m sorry for creatures who cannot pair
On a gorgeous day in the upper air,
I’m sorry for cows that have to boast
Of affairs they’ve had by parcel post,
I’m sorry for a man with his plots and guile,
His test-tube manner, his test-tube smile;
I’ll multiply and I’ll increase
As I always have–by mere caprice;
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy free,
Love-in-air is the thing for me,

Oh, it’s simply rare
In the beautiful air,
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate

With whatever drone I encounter,
All hail the queen!
~E.B. White from “Song of the Queen Bee” published in the New Yorker 1945

beeswarm5147

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
~William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

beeswarm51411

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

 

beeswarm5141

…The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places.
Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you.
Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants.
Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting.
If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper.
Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t.
Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
~Sue Monk Kidd from The Secret Life of Bees

beeswarm5142

Such bees! Bilbo had never seen anything like them.
“If one were to sting me,” He thought “I should swell up as big as I am!
~J.R.R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

what's left behind this morning, waiting for the beekeeper's return
what’s left behind the following morning, waiting for the beekeeper’s return

whatsleft2

When the bee comes to your house, let her have beer; you may want to visit the bee’s house some day.
    -Congo Proverb

from May 2014 (reblog)