This marks my fifth (wow) year of beekeeping, and my fourth time harvesting without you Matthew P. It has been different each year After and Since - the first fall, a horrible bumbling experience with strangers who claimed experience, followed by a repeat effort with broken extractors shooting blue sparks while your friend, her daughter, and I stuck screwdrivers into the wiring to try and make it work. The second fall was sweeter and quiet, though my heart was too broken to feel anything but sad. I didn't even harvest last year; just didn't have it in me, and the bees didn't either. This year, however, those honey boxes are full full full, and I need to find a team to stand in your stead.
The peach tree that used to stand beside our hives is gone. That first fall as beekeepers, we harvested honey and dipped ripe peaches into broken combs - excellent timing, that tree. The yard owners took it down last year, or maybe the year before, after years of declining yields. The seat we built beneath the tree, where you used to go each morning to meditate and watch the bees, that is gone too. There's not really a place for a seat now. I don't watch them like we did; I rarely check on them. Not the way we did together, anyway. I'm disappointed in myself that I am not calm around the bees as I was Before. I am a lazy beekeeper now, and feel less confident, that's for sure.
But I will begin to assemble a team - harder than it seems, as I'm finding many people afraid of bees - and be full of wonder and awe and all of that again, slicing open the comb, seeing the colors, guessing at their source. It was such a celebration that first year. The following years, while not grim, were simply efficient. This year, I think, it will be a celebration again. Although a very different one.
My hand is swelling some. Time for homeopathics and benadryl. And more emails finding people unafraid of bees, or willing to become that way.
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(((Megan)))
ReplyDeleteYou need Greg to help you. He and his father kept hives all over SE Queensland and would sell honey to Capilano. There are still bee boxes and two huge vats of honey at the farm.
ReplyDeleteWhenever he would see a honey bee in the garden he would say "Hello little bee" and greet it like an old friend.
I'll tell him to go visit you when you need to rob the hives.
Me though - I am scared of bees.
I definitely need both Greg and Matt. Calm, a little height, strength, and all their collected bee mojo. Matt had the same greeting for bees - "hello my friend," and "hello ladies."
Deleteoh, this makes me sad. fear of bees +/or stings did not enter into my equation or even my mind; it is the height of August craziness that scares me instead.
ReplyDeleteguessing. homeopathic remedy. apis?
Beautiful post and photo, megan. I hope you are ale to find a helper or two. If I were not so far away, I would love to help. No fear of bees. In fact, I love them. The Arizona house has two large patches or rosemary - each about 8 feet in diameter. By afternoon each day, the rosemary is alive with bees. They would be africanized bees as almost all are down there, but they are usually calm. I work around them photographing butterflies and they ignore you if you are unafraid. A favorite memory is of my older collie, Sabrina, wading through the rosemary with the steady hum of bees all around her. The bees never harmed her in all our winters there. She would come indoors smelling of rosemary for the next few hours.
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