The weather has closed it’s fist around the farm and the Northwest. Winter has walked far into summer to to close it’s grip. June is cold. And wet. And dark. Dark. Dark. The days dip to ten degrees and sometimes below. The smell of wood and peatsmoke drifts in the wind as people light stoves to stave off the summer.
And then it hits. The Midsummer Winter shatters like a cup breaking on tile and the heat is here. And the light. And the sun. And the swarms. The bees finally come.
I am standing in the first heat of the summer. Jeans. T-Shirt. In a garden. There is nowhere a thing is not growing. There is not a border between garden and wild here. Hip high plants. Paths that are thin, made by walking and take as little space as they can. Where growing things not the person who tends them have pride of place. A place for bees the grower says. I watch. Closely. Carefully. A shining rippling wing clad teardrop of living things hangs from the crook of a fruit tree. A swarm. It is inches from my face. Scout bees return and alight on the outer edge of the solid mass of bee. The wings and bodies of the swarm ripple and shimmer as the bees makes space.
15 minutes before my neighbour had called. “There’s a swarm. Do you want it?”
Yes I do…no I don’t. Yes I don’t. No I do. I’m showering the children, washing up, gathering clothes wrapped up in the hectic and headlong hurtling banality of family life. I’m pulled from that hub to the bees. I’m caught between two places. I’ve never done this. Seem it done only on YouTube. Will my homemade hive hold up. Will I make a mess of it. Will I look like an idiot.
I say yes. I will be there as soon as I can . Now I don’t have time to think of the reasons not to.
It’s light when I arrive but the sharp hotness of summer has dissolved to the warm afterheat of the perfect summers day. There’s light still, but the sun is soon to set. There’s no rain. No wind. The swarm is still and calm on the trunk of the tree. Drowsy a little with queen scent and the honey they have gorged for their swarming. Well fed. Safe. Surrounded by themselves. The queen at the heart of the swarm. All is well.
I have a soft brush. A trap hive. Top Bars. Duct tape. I am fingers and thumbs and hurtling enthusiasm and I trip up over flowerpots and garden tools, tumbling with enthusiasm and giddy with impostor syndrome into the garden. I have other tools. Ladders, smokers, steps, multitools, lighters, matches, tinder, a headtorch. I won’t need them. All I need is a brush, a box, a beesuit and a steady hand.
I’m in jeans and a tshirt facing the swarm and everything else gets stripped away by the moment of it. There are the bright and glittering bodies gathered about the queen. A branch. A brush. A box. And me. Space for little else. I think briefly of my motorcycle instructor. Be. Here. Now. No space for half an hour ago or tomorrow Keith. No space for worry. It’s too dangerous. Space only for now.
I zip into my suit. Gather my box, arrange the bars and lid, grapple the box to my body with my left arm and sweep the bees into it with firm care with my right. A teardrop of things falls into the box and then suddenly fills the air with itself, no longer one silent shimmering thing but now thousands of loudnesses each an individual point in the sky or in the box.
Carfeully I refit the lid. Brushing inquisitive bees from the rim. Do not crush one. Do not crush one. I do not. And wait. The bees, slowly, but surely, empty from the box and resettle on the branch. I have not caught the queen. When I do the rest will follow.
I try again. Bees now zipping into the face of the suit every twenty seconds. The world still loud with themselves. A brilliant though different kind of beauty. A living cathedral of stinging sound. The bees resettle on their branch. I gather my gear together. A second drop and cloud and roar and careful reclosing of the hive. A second fail as bees trickle back out the jive entrance to the tree. Third times a charm. My heart is thumping in my chest. My hand is steady. I feel. Amazing.
I hold the box against my hip and chest, angle it closer to the regathered swarm, pivot to the tree, carefully brush, once, twice, three times. Close the lid. Retreat from the blossoming cloud of sound and bee that fills the world. Coming back carefully I see bees at the hive entrance. They are beating their wings. Sending the queens scent from the hive to the air to call down the bees who have resettled, call down the cloud that fill the air, call down the scouting bees. She is here. We are here. Come home. Come home.
The bees filter down from the tree and begin to fill the hive. The hive quietens. Calms. Settles. It becomes a settled hum and then silent. I am done.
I open the lid, settle the top bars across the divide and reclose the hive. Ten minutes later the work is done. I have caught my first swarm. I secure the lid with duct tape. Gather my tools. Pop the hive in the front seat of the car. And drive them home. The hive now sitting on a stand in the Apiary. Where the flag iris come to my shoulder. In amongst the alder and the willow, cheek by jowl with out wildflower meadow and our woods.
I’ve said before that bees are my mid life crisis. My attempt to prove that I can still do something new. Be good at new things. Learn. Adapt. Improve. Be useful.
I think my mid life is going rather well.
