Lots of Buzzing but Few Bees

  

            This summer sure felt like the Year of the Wasp. Hundreds of thousands if not millions covered the landscape. An unmistakable hum accompanied me wherever I went. If I looked at the ground, it seemed as if not less than one hornet was searching for food there. They canvassed every rise and fall, nook and cranny. Not one of my children escaped at least one angry sting this summer.

             One time when playing they tore into an old decaying log only to be chased angrily by the mad hornets. They didn’t know that figuratively stirring up a hornets nest is better than literally doing it. Each got stung multiple times as they ran in terror. I had never seen such a plague of these yellow jacketed warriors in all my life.

             I mentioned this to a gentleman who stopped by the farm awhile back. I said to him, “The bees sure have been horrible this year.” He shot back, “Not bees, hornets. Bees are honeybees. Everything else is wasp or hornets, but not bees.” I see I had hit a nerve. A tender spot for him. You see, he raised bees, honeybees that is. I hadn’t thought about it enough to know that there was a distinction but for him it was important. He was a little sore on the subject. He explained that there is a great scarcity of honeybees. It’s extremely hard to keep a beehive alive now. His own colony has been greatly diminished.

             I take it whole food crops are being abandoned in California for want of enough honeybees to pollinate the flowers. Now I have a somewhat fond attachment to honeybees myself as I had the privilege to companionate (I just taught Noah Webster a new word!) my Dad when he would work the few Hobby Hives he had on our farm. I learned a lot about bees, and got a number of stinging rebukes from the little fellows myself when my learning got to close for their comfort. You’ll have to laugh with me on that in Volume Two of The Adventures of Nathaniel B. Oakes coming out soon.

 

            I guess it’s quite a growing concern for many countries around the world, this lack of honeybees. No bees, No food.

             Wasp can’t fill their place. They are they scavengers of others fruit and meat. In fact they love to steal honey from the honeybee.

 

            There have been many theories as to why the disappearing honeybees. Cell phone tower waves, and the plethora of electromagnetic waves pulsing  from our T.V’s, smart phones, ipads, etc. that mess with their navigation have been offered as explanations.  Nectar from genetically modified food being deficient for them has also been fingered. I do not propose that I have any notion as to why they are disappearing, but it did strike me metaphorically that if I want my hive ~ my home ~ to be “a land flowing with milk and honey” I had better know what influences I am allowing into it that will make it healthy or sick.
 

            Come to think of it, maybe our homes suffer from the same problems of the honeybees. The honeybees suffer from the electromagnetic waves themselves perhaps, and our homes from the morally reprehensible content that make up those waves. Do the waves that are allowed into my home foster, the True, the Good and The Beautiful? …Or not? 

            Well just as the beekeeper must make sure whatever is nourishing or sicklifying (sometimes Webster’s Dictionary doesn’t have just the right word, I had to find this one in David’s) his hive is properly attended to, so I must make sure the husbandry of my family is up to speed.

             I must keep those pesky wasps out, and make it comfortable for bees if I am to attain the promise of “a land flowing with milk and Honey.” Well, for the honey anyway. The cow will get her turn in good time.

Don’t get stung!

Have a great day,
David Cools
www.jdoakes.com