Memory of Bees

Spring. Yellow black-eyed Susans were popping up along side the road and the crickets chirping added to the chorus of buzzing in the air.  Sarah and I were walking up to the cow pasture, passing a snake on the way, Sarah said, “I wish I had my machete with me, I would’a killed that sucker.” It was a young copperhead not fully grown but lethal all the same. I was forever mindful that the landscape and animals within weren't as gentle as the rolling hills or coast of California. There were sumac leaves to be wary about and poison ivy and stinging nettles to avoid. Watch out for those leaves you'll get a rash,” Sarah warned as I was admiring their shape. Without getting closer I kept my arms glued to my sides and stayed in the middle of the road. Sarah picked a blade of grass and began to blow through it. It became a reed, making a horn like sound you hear at a children's party. “Did you ever do this as a kid?” she asked. I nodded and blew through a blade I put between my thumbs. Kicking stones, blowing through grass reeds, we were eight years old again.

The cow pasture was a welcome sight, open land and sky. We loved to see the sky! “Ahh...!”  Sarah would exclaim, exhaling while taking in the sun. This, I thought, is all we need; it was all we ever needed on this earth.

The cows glanced at us with disdain and shifted heavily in the tall grass; we weren't the ones delivering their hay. The grass swooshed through our ankles and feet as we stepped over small slopes. Sarah pointed out a large tree that was struck by lightening the year before. It was as large as a semi. She could hear it fall from her house she said. A line of trees marked the river and we stood on the edge of a cliff looking down at the water. Brown and murky, Sarah remarked, “Isn't it beautiful!” No, I thought, struggling to find beauty in the brown trickling water, yet, I heard myself say, “Yes it is,” my voice flat with disappointment.

We continued on... in the stillness, an eagle, hooves of cows, and an airplane headed for Houston sounded.

Sarah pointed towards some pines, explaining what lay beyond our line of vision. I used my imagination and tried to map it out in my mind. A clearing that spread behind her property connected to roads within the forest. People lived out there, miles away, and yet we could hear echoes of their music, voices and cars. More pastures and forest lay beyond that. She walked this land every week, strapping on her gun and carrying a machete with her dog Gator by her side. Gator started eating less and became lethargic about a month before I arrived. He already had a visit to the vet and we assumed his medication wasn't working anymore. We all worried over him. His eyes kind and loving, he would try to eat to please us. Early one morning Sarah woke up and took him to the vet without a word to her brother or me. Returning hours later, I greeted her outside and asked if she had Gator with her. “Yes, she replied, he's in the truck.” My heart leapt. Happy he received help of any sort from the vet, I headed toward the truck expectant of his loving dark eyes and tailless wag. Then, gruffly, she said, “He's dead.” 

Hearing that took my breath away and I swallowed hard.

Without ceremony she got down to it, found a shovel and started digging a grave by her bedroom window. Jack and I stood silent as she dug for a while. Then he said, feeling hurt, “Why didn't you tell me you was taking Gator to the vet?”

“What good would it have done?” she replied.

Her brother stood silent, stoic like Sarah, considering her words and keeping to himself. My heart was breaking although I only knew the dog a week. All I could think of is that nobody is sobbing and it's all I wanted to do. I held it in. After all there's no crying around here. Her brother dug for a while then they said a few words about Gator. We all put a scoop of dirt on him before he was buried. An appliance grid was set on top of his grave to deter wild animals from digging him up. A rose bush grew beside it and I imagined, at night, Sarah would lie in her bed guarding over him, keeping him by her side outside her bedroom window, and maybe, with time we would all stop expecting to see him in every room of the house.

We continued our walk, stopping at the corral on our way back, watching the cows and calves, listening to them chewing, commenting on their colors, markings and behaviors. Back on the road, a car with loud rock music slowly drove towards us. They stopped to talk. Sarah told them about the snake and her desire to have her machete with her. They said, “That snake will git you when you swing at it!  You be careful Miss Sarah.”

“Nah, I do it all the time,” she replied. They drove on, a cloud of red dust trailing behind. We covered our noses and mouths and continued on.

Stopping at the mailbox, Frisco, a black Tennessee Walker, came nodding toward us and walked beside us the rest of the way towards the house. Diamond Girl, the calico, joined us. We stepped inside the living room through the carport and there were hundreds of bees flat against the sliding glass door and the window adjacent to it. Sarah said this happened every year at the same time. She had marked it in her calendar and had no idea how they got in or why it happened. We opened the doors and windows trying to get them out. Eventually, we got a small net she used for her birds to guide them out to the porch. They were stubborn and determined to cover the glass window and door. “I'm gonna have to kill ‘em,” she said gruffly, her pitch getting lower when she wanted to mean business.

“No way. We need bees and they're already becoming extinct. We can't survive without them.”

“Well I don't care, I gotta get them outta here and they won't go!”

We continued to carry them out, and by the time the moon rose there were only two or three crawling on the windowsill and door. In the morning the swarm was back. This cycle went on for a few days until it simply ended and they stopped coming in.

Instinct. Habit. Year after year a new generation of bees stubbornly return to this room, covering the flat plate glass windows filled with bright light. Are they attracted to the darkness or the trail of light that cuts through it? What was left behind to cause them to return? What do they remember?

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Why do bees swarm?

From CBS Denver:

According to Etomologist Maryann Hamilton with a Butterfly Pavilion, bees swarm when they are relocating with the old Queen the old queen bee along with more than half the colony have to relocate because there is a new queen bee that has taken over the existing colony.

According to bee meaning and symbolism from the astrologyweb:

A single bee or a swarm chasing or attacking you may symbolize that you are being plagued by certain memories you still haven't come to terms with. It also means that you are perturbed by the possibility of a past event surfacing and jeopardizing your present~kao