A bit of business first; I want to thank everyone who passed last week’s blog along to your friends. The feedback that I got was fantastic and frankly is one of the reasons I sit down every week for this therapy.
Also, to the right is a button that you can click on that will let you follow “You said what, Roger?”. I don’t know what happens when you are a blog follower. I do not think that there is a decoder ring, but I did not try it myself. I thought it would be a bit silly to follow my own blog. It would be like the dog chasing his own tail. It’s fun for a while. Everyone paying attention, laughing, saying cute dog, but after a while you get tired of looking at your butt and you start building up static electricity from that hideous green shag carpet in the basement and then your master touches you on the nose and then he wonders why you are reluctant to come when he calls. When you click the button, I suppose that you get a notification that I have posted a blog and you can read it if you like. So don’t think too long about the above simile, and sign up to follow if you want. Off we go.
Bill couldn’t stop crying. The moment his mom called to tell him that Mr. Walls had died the tears caused his vision to blur and built until they started running down his cheeks. The call wasn’t unexpected; just unwelcome. As he closed his phone, he was thankful that his mom hadn’t used skype. Watching her face react to his tears would have made it that much worse.
As he sat there awash with the loss, Bill’s mind filled with the spring that started his apiarian love that lead to his proposed vocation. He was 9 and Billy then. He had just started 4H and had run into the project hall looking and hoping for a blue ribbon on the circuit board that he and his father had put together at the last minute. The ribbon wasn’t blue. It was red and while no amount of words would make it better. It wasn’t so bad that it kept him from noticing the working bee hive that was on display in the back corner of the hall. The frames all lined up behind plexi-glass. You could see the brood, the queen, the honey, and all of those bees. Constantly moving, buzzing, taking pollen and making something as good as honey. You could watch the bees travel through a tube through the wall; going out clean coming back yellow with pollen. And the thrumming; even behind the plexiglass you could feel them vibrating. Alive filling that corner with life and there was Mr. Walls patiently answering questions about what bees eat, how they make honey, showing the queen as she worked at laying eggs. Billy was transfixed.
Mr. Walls lived down the street. He had been on the periphery of Billy’s life. They were older than his parents, but he and his wife were friends of his mom and dad. Billy’s dad would visit as he borrowed tools. His mom always credited Mrs. Walls for her killer pie crust recipe. (You have to use Crisco.) And there was always the story of how his dad called Mrs. Walls one night when his mom was gone and Billy would not stop crying. She came down just to help him rock that inconsolable baby and listen to the exercising of some very healthy lungs; because “sometimes that all you can do.” Mr. Walls saw Billy and offered to let him get really close to bees if he was interested.
Billy had always been too busy to notice the hive on the back corner of his lot. But that next week, He was at Mr. Walls’ house early on Saturday morning. Mr. Walls said that while he usually did not work the hive much during the summer but “it wouldn’t hurt anything if we worked it early in the day before the heat came on. They were there at 6:00. Mr. Walls didn’t use gloves or a bee veil to inspect a hive. He said if you go slow they won’t sting. . . very often. Jerking his head up looking at him wide-eyed and paler, Billy saw in his face that look that he came to trust more that his words. A kind smile and a liveliness in the eye that told Billy “Don’t pay any attention to that. It will be okay.” And somehow it was okay. He used his hive tool to pry off the top and invited Billy up to look. It was okay. He didn’t know why but there was no fear; looking in that hive, letting the bees come and go and just a breath away. It was okay.
He was hooked. 9 more years of 4H and while the bee project was often put off. Mr. Walls prodded Billy like his mom and dad could never do. He learned all there was to learn about bees. And there has been a lot to learn about bees since then; mites, foulbrood, and now colony collapse syndrome. Nervous, Billy was sure that Mr. Walls’ bees were on the brink of extinction. Billy was always imploring Mr. Walls to make bee candy in the spring, mite strips in the fall, and antibiotic year around. “Bee candy? Billy you want to make those bees lazy? They are supposed to make us candy. Where do you think the saying “busy as a bee” came from. Not from a bunch of sissified bees eating candy. But from bees busily working in their colony.” He would scoff at the use of all of those other remedies because his bees weren’t sick.
Finally, Billy found Mr. Walls’ secret. He had learned in biology that bees can trek over 5 miles to get pollen for honey. When sharing his knowledge with Mr Walls one April as he was inspecting the hive, Mr. Walls asked, “5 miles?
“Sure. Not often. But sometimes and most of the time it is at least two miles.”
He told Billy of a way to track bees in their flight. He had learned it as a child and it always worked. He wanted to know if Billy was game. “Sure.” Mr. Walls suggested that he go home and get a bike because that would make it easier to keep up with the bee tracking. Running home and back minutes later, Mr Walls was coming out of the house with a cotton ball and a bit of glue. He reached into that hive, pulled out a bee and glued that cotton ball to it’s belly. He took that moment to encourage the mounting of the bike and to prepare Billy for the ride of a lifetime. 1, 2, 3 go and he threw that bee into the air and Billy was off. Looking around for that white ball of cotton and there it was. It was flying around in a circle to get its bearing and it was off. It headed off 10 yards to a patch of early snow peas (pees see last weeks blog), landed on those white-pink blossoms and did its thing. Crashing, Billy nearly ran through the garden fence. Mr. Walls came over and picked boy and bike up. Chuckling with that look, he said, “I guess bees only go as far as they need to go.”
Take care of yourself and find what you need close.
Roger
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