We came around to the hives again on Sunday afternoon. Once more I dragged my things out of the boot of my car and walked around the front of the house alongside the canal. The gardens are at their absolute best now; colours bursting out all over, backed by the rich, verdant greenness of grass and wildflower. Everywhere the flowers are out - campanula, forget-me-not, roses, apple blossom, hawthorn, sweet cicely, iris, allium, lupins, red hot poker, buttercup. Purples and yellows and whites and reds and gold and pinks; you could lose yourself in the rainbow of colour and scent.
I sat down in front of the hives, waiting for Tom and Liz to come back. I watched the action at the front doorsteps of all three hives. Number One - "Mum's Hive" - showed some activity, bees going in and out, but I couldn't see any pollen baskets coming in. Hmmm. Number Two - "Tom's Hive" - was absolutely rip-roaring away - thousands of bees pouring in and out, pollen baskets filled, bees queueing up to get in and out of the entrance way. Number Three - "Margo's Hive" - showed some bees coming in and out. But I knew straight away; years of watching and waiting have taught me some kind of inner signal. I knew. They were slower than the other bees. They kind of meandered around the entrance in a bit of a pointless fashion, looking a bit aimless and muddled. No pollen going in. I knew.
We opened it up and nothing has changed. There were still three or four frames covered in bees, but no cohesion among them. They weren't working together, interacting, talking, exchanging, waggling or busy. No brood, nominal honey stores, the same old sticky, messy frames. My colony is gone. And our devices have not worked. We stuck in a frame of brood in all stages, and the bees have not made a Queen cell. Thinking about it logically, like a bee, of course they wouldn't. The bees in my hive box are not in their home, they are merely sneaking in to rob out an empty house. This is not their home; their home - with their Queen - is elsewhere. They have Her pheromones fresh-licked all over them; of course they wouldn't make another Queen.
We went through Tom's hive and it has recovered brilliantly; the Blue Queen is there; lots of brood in all stages, but no attempt to build honey in the super above. Of course not, they don't need to - there's a playground to mess around in, in Margo's hive. More worrying is the third hive, which has no brood, only an overload of pollen, and honey. The Queen is there, but Her blue paint has been licked off and She is not laying. We need to watch Her carefully. So we took my box, and placed it over a sheet of newspaper on top of Tom's hive. The two groups of bees will nibble through and come together slowly without aggression. I packed away my brood box, roof and floor, and crown board. My hive is gone. Tom and Liz left me there for a while, and I sat and watched the two remaining hives. I felt a kind of nothingness, and then a sense of rightness.
When I used to do my beekeeping alone, as a solitary, sometimes I would talk to my bees. I know I'm a crazy woman (you knew that, right?) but you would have done it too. They're like an entity, a single mind, a whole creature. How can you not talk to someone like that? I used to mutter and grumble, or compliment them on their hard work. I'd ask them how they were doing in the depths of winter as I knocked on the outside of the hive, and I would hear their reassuring hum coming back to answer me through the wall of the box. So this time as I watched them, I felt like I was saluting them, acknowledging the richness of the gift they've given me - all these years of learning from them, working with them, exchanging honey for food and protection. As they went on their way, entirely unaware of my presence, I could only admire them. "It's been a privilege," I said, as I left them.
Then me and Tom and Liz had tea and talked, and made notes and plans. And I wandered through the garden and we lay beneath the laburnum tree and watched the bumble bees. In the warm afternoon with the blue sky above, the sun shone through the wash of yellow and set it aglow, and we heard in the silence the sound of bees, so loud it seemed that the tree itself was humming. It felt like a living thing connected to my skin through the ground and the grass and back up into the branches, right up to the very top.
Perhaps one day I will keep bees again. But for now I just feel a kind of relief. I've been freed from duty; freed from my responsibility to the bees. They've let me go, even if it's just for a little while, so that I can try and find my way again.
They always did know better than me.
