The warehouse was closing, and I stood in the parking lot holding the cage at arm's length like a ticking bomb while the nonplussed staff closed up the barn. A quiet hum emanated from the cluster. It was less the beating of wings as it was thousands of their felted bodies turning over on one another. Faintly, I could smell their sweet, floral musk. At their center, a new queen waited to be released.
We sped past every rest stop and arrived home with our colony intact. They were to live in Tim's mother's Braintree backyard, where our family friend could advise us. We'd invited friends to watch our bee installation, and they did so from a safe distance. I think we were all afraid the bees were going to explode out of the box like those zooming cartoon swarms, but that's the opposite of how honeybees behave. The bees were lethargic in the cool weather, and as we poured them into their new home, they plopped out like gobs of molasses. We smacked the box to shake out lazy stragglers.
Besides, as I would learn, these bees were specifically bred to be docile. They will land on you and perch like a canary and then take off — it's a pretty non-threatening relationship once you get over the initial shock of being that close with a bee. They just want to work.
Soon, our bees were titans of their industry. They built divinely mathematical, hexagonal wax cells in which they stored nectar and fed twirls of larvae. Ecstatically, we discovered bulging, capped honey weighing down the frames, which glowed when we held it to light. Our brilliant bees cooled the hive entrance with their wings and battled invader yellow jackets. I noticed dozens of them poring over nearby flowers. The rosebush next to the hive looked positively oversexed.
I knew things were working, but I didn't know much else. I turned to Mike Graney, a local beekeeper I'd met the previous winter when I was first researching bees. I peppered him with nervous questions.
When I spotted the dreaded varroa destructor, a common bee mite, I frantically queried my new guru. "Are mites a certain mark for death or have you been able to control them?" I wrote him while agonizing over treatment options. One strategy might result in bee diarrhea — that's a thing! — others poisoned the honey. A hive crammed with inedible honey sounded like some Dadaist joke: ceci n'est pas une hive. Graney urged me to keep cool and allow my colony their most important work: growing strong. Weeks passed, and my bees remained unfazed.
When most people are approached by a bee, the common reaction is to flail like a windmill. When we enter the hive for inspections and maintenance, we resist this instinct. We breathe deeply, and move slowly and deliberately: hive time is meditative. We've been stung. Tim caught his first one after we crushed a bee during inspection. Its sister snapped into a vigilante rage and stung him in the face. I made it all the way to October, when I noticed my glove was vibrating: bees tired of my inspection were stinging with total-body vigor. They tore into milky shreds as I brushed them away.
