That would be the reason that I have a struggling vegetable garden and two beehives in my backyard. At the end of every summer, worn out by the heat and a bit discouraged by the fact that all my plants have died, I think to myself: Maybe next year I'll just forget the garden. And every late winter, the bug bites and I begin planning how this year it will be different. This year, maybe everything will grow and I'll have so many tomatoes that I'll have to try sun-drying them. Unfortunately, I've never had such a surplus. Well, one year I did have so many cucumbers that we're still eating (and giving away) the pickles...but an over-abundance of tomatoes is still the gauge by which I measure my success. And by that measure, I have not succeeded. Still, something about the coming of spring always makes me want to try again. So I till a tiny patch of ground (without calling the utility company first) or spread out newspapers and leaves to try what I have been told is called "lasagna gardening" and plant with blithe disregard for the spacing recommendations on my seed packets. And sometimes I weed. When I remember, and when I'm not too tired, and when I can get out on a Saturday before the sun is high enough to bake me.
And the beehives? Most of my neighbors probably don't know it, but approximately 80,000 tiny golden insects live in two custom-designed (read: built by me and my long-suffering husband) top bar hives in my city backyard. So far as I know, they have never stung anyone but my dog, who foolishly tried to eat one. As I watched from my seat on an overturned bucket this afternoon, mesmerized by the spectacle of their coming and going, I tried to remember just how I came to choose this strange hobby. I think it was two winters ago after reading Chalice by Robin McKinley--a beautiful book. Something in the story caught my imagination, and the next thing my poor husband knew I was researching the best ways to start my own hives. The first winter, all my bees froze to death in the coldest weather Oklahoma had seen in decades. I opened my hives in February to check on my girls (all worker bees are girls) and found their little bodies still and silent. I cried the rest of the afternoon. Jerry, jewel of men, hugged me and told me not to give up. Accordingly, as soon as I could slow the tears, I found a supplier who was not already sold out and ordered two packages. Bees come in 3-pound packages--about 40,000-60,000 bees each.
Three months feels like forever when you're waiting on an order to arrive, but they finally came at the end of May. When I got the call from the post office and went to pick them up, the postmaster waved away my offer to show ID with a laugh. "Nobody else wants your bees," he chuckled. All ready with my sugar syrup, veil and gloves, I "installed" my bees into their new homes...and found that one of the queens was dead. Each hive has to have a queen; just like people, bees cannot thrive without good leadership. So I called the supplier and they sent a replacement as quickly as they could...but she died after I got her home. By this time I was frantic; I called a friend who also keeps bees, and he sympathetically rounded up a new queen for me. But it had already been a full week, and I think the poor things were in shock. Even now, in the middle of July, that first hive is still having trouble gaining its strength.
But the second hive--oh, you should see it! If I had read them a textbook on how to run a perfect colony, they couldn't do better. To sit, as I do, on a nearby bucket and watch their tiny striped bodies buzz in and out, so full of purpose and determination that sometimes they bump into my head because they're so intent on getting back to the hive with their loads of pollen or nectar...as I mentioned, it's mesmerizing. The sun blazes down, making me feel as if I'm on the inside of an oven, and the sweet smell of honeycomb fills the hot stillness, and I could sit there for hours.
