Tag: honey

THE NEAREST dream recedes, unrealized. The heaven we chase
Like the June bee
Before the school-boy
Invites the race;
Stoops to an easy clover—
Dips—evades—teases—deploys;
Then to the royal clouds
Lifts his light pinnace
Heedless of the boy
Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.

Homesick for steadfast honey,
Ah! the bee flies not
That brews that rare variety.

~Emily Dickinson

I’ve been without bees for a couple of years now, and I do not like it. Homesick for honey, yes, but even more, viscerally, for the companionship of bees, their presence, their energy humming out through the warm soft heaviness of summer air.

It’s difficult to explain–I think there are people who are entranced by bees on some very instinctive level, and people who are not. There are people who are allergic to bees, of course.

I was talking recently with a friend about the kinds of strange preferences people often discover themselves to have, and we were wondering if there was something deeply ingrained in human nature, in DNA, in something, that is inherited. Why do we love the cuisines of certain places? Why does some music stir our souls? Is this baked into us somehow? I wonder this about beekeeping. Is this somehow embedded in me?

I am an anxious person, a twitchy kind of soul, the kind of person who annoys other people inadvertently by frenetically tapping my feet without realizing I’m doing it. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder years ago. There are very few things I can do that completely take my mind off the fretful minutiae of daily life. Beekeeping is one of those things.

The first time I installed bees in a hive, shaking them from their box into the waiting hive body, they swarmed up in a golden cloud around me, filling the air. It would have made sense if I’d been terrified–but instead, a soul-deep peace settled over me, and for a moment, I was entirely caught up in that shimmering haze of wings. I knew in that instant that I wanted that feeling, needed it, always, forever, as much and as long as possible. Bees heal something deep within me.

I have been homesick for them these past couple of years. But they are coming! Soon I’ll be picking up my new hives. I will drive them home to their spot in the little orchard. I will sing to them–I always sing to them. Songs about bees, about honey and stings, life and death and sweetness–the things bees understand. And then, at long last, we will all be home.