Swarming is a fascinating–and dramatic–part of the life cycle of a honeybee colony. Half the bees leave with the current queen to seek new digs. The remaining colony hatches a new queen. Sometimes you can catch a swarm and raise it up. My best hive came from a swarm high in an oak tree. But sometimes you can’t.
“….Mom…”
The cloud was upon us.
“Don’t move.”
Bees. Honeybees.
Then they were gone.
“Swarm!”
I leapt to the chase. All I caught was a poem.
Farewell, Milady: On Chasing Bees and Ghosts
Out! Out! Away! Through the oaks, the pines, the wide open spaces where meadowlarks hide and fawns rest, toward an unseen hope in some rumored hollow tree
Winging over fields of green with ten thousand true believers
This splintering must work or the quest will fail
My boots are too heavy, but I stretch out a hand, skyward in a silent cry that I’ve thought before
but, but, I should have, I didn’t mean… and she’s gone, gone, somehow like the others, an echo of my kind (who don’t fly by definition, but I never noticed because Queens are made to be served)
Words tie my laces together or at least my tongue with the sting of fear paralyzing a thousand times
but, but…
Clunking along at a poor game of catch-up and a duck of the fence and a knock on the neighbor’s door to let them know I’m a madman with a purpose, staring into vacant trees that are
too quiet.
She’s gone.
Farewell, Milady.
A small swarm last spring. We caught that one.