It may not be, as Lovelock imagined, a case of decades in which to prepare for a soft landing. It may be, rather, only one or two summers without bees. It may be, as Lori Weitzel, suggests, a mere
Drought in the meadery.
Silent Thriae
They’re called back to sweeter, darker places,
away from our quilts of tailor-made maize, triticale,
sorghum and soy. Hives empty as ruins, leaving just
enough honey so, drunk on that gold, we’ll forget
how to hum in the fields of the tripled bee-goddess.
The children of the Thriae are leaving us; no
good-bye note written by fallen corpses, they
have gone, in secret, to caverns full of wax.
The oracle is silent. Hordes, mining a fools' gold,
riddled how nature speaks herself: but she refused
to speak about the bees, and her queens, dimmed
as if lit by an eclipse, host no more dances.
I killed a bumble bee yesterday, when it snuck into my house and buzzed upon me, threatening, surprising, and far too early in the season to inspire sacrifice. As my friend Rachael carried the body outside to give it to the Earth, I understood of what I might be guilty.
Part of me wants to cry out, "Don't give up on us, Sisters! We'll get better; we'll figure out how to live in peace with your work." And part of me says, "We deserve to be abandoned. My deepest wish is to follow the swarms to go to wherever it is that they go when they abandon the hives that have sustained us." If it turns out to be the Amazon, the lungs of Gaia, I won't be surprised. The white blood cells go where they are needed most.
So mote it be.
Thanks to Gold Poppy for directing me to this post.
It is the domestic honeybee that does most of the pollinization in American and Europeon crops---and it is in big trouble now. The wonderful wild bumblebees do work hard, but they are sporadic pollinators by comparison; and with their very small hives (a few dozen bees) they are incapable of doing the job of the honey bees. My own hives...well, I have one still strong and vibrant out of three. Let us hope someone finds the problem before the bees go, or our tables will be very bare of anything good or interesting.
ReplyDeleteI saved the life of a bumblebee, yesterday. It was soaking wet from the previous nights rain, and was muddy and half buried in the mulch in one of my planters. I thought it was dead, but as I picked it up, it waved an antenae, so I put it on a warm rock, in the sunshine. It took 20/30 minutes for it to warm up and dry out, and then it flew away. (and I sat back and watched, the whole time)definitely the most significant thing I accomplished yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI share your sadness. I've had a few quiet moments trying to deal with this one. Disturbing.
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