Instincts

Besides cows, sheep, cats and us, there are many wild things that make their home here on this western Oregon farm and along its creek. They are the ones it would be easy to miss when a person is in a hurry to do chores or even take photographs. Wild turkey, deer, many types of birds, beaver, raccoons, opossums, insects, frogs, crickets, and, of course, the occasional passing through coyote, elk, bear, cougar.

Down by the creek, you will see the honey bees. Watch carefully and pretty soon you notice which way they are heading and from where they are coming. Approaching closer, you can get photographs of their bee tree with them coming and going, climbing down inside the hollow. The tree doesn't look very special to those of us who are not bees. Just a tree that is hollow inside, but for a bee, this is Shangri-la and the perfect location for the queen, drones and workers to settle.

To get honey, human (maybe bear also) bee hunters would track wild bees for miles to take some of their honey-- but not so much as to kill off the hive. Now days most honey is gathered from commercial hives although many commercial hives are not intended for honey production but rather to enhance productivity. The poor bees, who only have one life purpose and that is to produce honey, are reduced to serving a commercial purpose that for them would only be a bi-product of their real calling.

How do bees find these perfect places to make their homes? I have watched a few bees swarm. Sometimes they do seem to know where they are going. Sometimes, they will spend nights clustered in tree branches as the scouts go afield looking for that perfect home.

When we first bought this farm, we made a feeble attempt to keep bees. We had a hive beyond the harness shed. One spring, they decided they'd had enough of these inferior quarters, and the whole swarm rose up with a loud humming and a dark, moving cloud.

My husband thought how cool and went out to take a photograph-- with a flash. If you should ever find yourself in such a situation, that's a no no. They went from a swarm of bees with only a general idea of leaving (unless scouts had already found a better place) to an angry swarm with one firm idea in mind-- attack the threat. They took off after him and he took off for the house. Once he was safely inside, those bees continued to circle the house until fortunately they remembered their original purpose.

Hard to say from where these bees have come. Were they run aways? Was a new queen encouraged to head out with a small swarm to find a new territory? The only real answer is instinct told them to go and where. You will have to look carefully to see the bees in this photo, but I assure you they are there and healthily out gathering pollen to be made into more honey. I go back every so often to keep an eye on how things are doing but resist the temptation to use a flash. :)

The concern for the honey bees has been in the papers. Their disappearing might be a climactic warning sign to the rest of us; then again it might be lousy bee keeping practices where keepers treat bees like a product whose only purpose is to pollinate commercial fields too large to be done any other way. Wild bees could handle a few of the crops but they'd never get them all. Humans learned an easier way. Today, commercial hives are trucked from one farm to another, state to state, and they are not allowed to keep much honey. Agribusiness is all about making money and honey isn't the object-- productivity is. Perhaps those run away bees have died far afield or maybe they have raised up a new queen and left to find a wild place to do what bees were created to do.

On the bees, in case you have been hearing the quote supposedly by Einstein that if all the bees disappeared, in 4 years all of life would follow-- it was not said by Einstein. It was most likely said by bee keepers about 14 years ago as they faced a bee problem in France. It's symptomatic of the Internet that people take quotes and add onto them some famous person and voila others pay attention. If someone named Jacques said it, who would care?

One other interesting tidbit relates to the so-called killer bees, which made their way to the southern regions of the United States from South America and inspired such fear. Well they are testy and have killed a few people in Arizona when they first arrived-- before people got the idea you don't swat at them and you hope nobody nearby did without a bee suit. I have lived near the Africanized bees when in Arizona and had swarms of them rush past as they go looking for a new hive without suffering a single sting-- so far. Of course, I kept a low profile too.) Anyway they are heartier, resist the fungus that has destroyed so many bee hives and maybe will be the salvation of the bee industry-- for those who don't mind a few stings. :)