Bring Out Your Dead...Or, Julia Gets Deep

All of our hives were busy today. There was an audible buzzing, a vibration that could be heard and felt within a quarter-acre distance from the hives.

It filled my heart with the hopefulness of Spring.

It was a wonderful day for taking photos. It was overcast, but the light was fabulous.

The bees were doing housekeeping, carrying out bits of of waxpaper from their winter feed patties and other debris and throwing it out the front doorstep. The bees were well-organized into two distinct working groups.

One group of bees was going through the debris on the ground in front of their hives, looking for and packing in pollen from the waste piles we created when we moved the hives from Idaho, cleaned them, and re-set them.

It's amazing that the bees would pick up the pollen that came out of their hives when we moved them. They don't let anything go to waste. And they're so industrious.

The other group of bees was cleaning.

The cleaning crew moved small debris individually, and teams of bees moved the larger waste.

They're very thorough.

I could have used them in my basement today. Um, talk about dust bunnies...I had some dust cows. Seriously, they were that big.

I swear I heard a couple piles moo. Um, but we can talk more about that on Dirty Secret Tuesday.

Part of housekeeping in the hive is bringing out the dead bees.

Which always reminds me of that part in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the "Bring out your dead!" and "But, I'm not dead yet!"...

As funny as that part of the movie is, the actuality of housekeeping often entails the colony removing not just those that are dead, but also those that are ill or weak, but not yet dead.

It was poignant today to see a team of bees bringing out a weak bee that will not make it, but is a drain on the community's food supply. At the same time there was removal going on, there were bees actively moving in and out of the hives, working diligently even in the face of suffering and death.

The process is so much more compassionate than it sounds. Even if the colony is removing a failing bee, sentencing her to certain and immediate death...they make sure she's followed all the way through. No bee is just thrown off of the front of the hive porch.

The cleaner flies or guides the dying bee to the ground. Once there, they touch each other all over before the cleaner heads back to the hive.

It seems like a caring goodbye.

Just because death is part of nature, just because we are talking about insects, doesn't mean that it isn't a beautiful and loving farewell.

Maybe bees know something we don't.

Maybe we can learn something from their serenity. They calmy carry on the work to assure the survival of the hive, even as their sisters are carried out of the hive, dying.

I don't think that means that they lack compassion or kindness.

Sometimes in the face of pain and difficulty, we all do we what we must to carry on.

Maybe bees understand life and death and community and the circle of life better than we ever will.

They don't fret over death. They don't worry about what's on the "other side."

It's hard not to get deep when I spend time with my bees.