Swarm étude

Just when you think you have your day organized and that you are well situated to accomplish all your allotted tasks, something happens. Sometimes it’s a volcano that fills the airspace with resplendent ash or a tornado that sends you scurrying to the dank cellar. Another time it’s a surprise communication from a man you knew forty years ago, and with whom you behaved badly. Regrettably. Yesterday it was a swarm.
The call came as I was reading and making notes about the fractious friendship between Henry James and H.G. Wells. I kept seeing the two men as “the unsexed and the oversexed”, though that is not how the literary rivalry was discussed in the critical context. Esther in Tarrytown said that the bees were swarming, this very minute, and gathering on the crabapple right next to their stone terrace. CSB was not answering his phone. I told her that I could keep trying his phone and that one of us would get there momentarily. I found him, and we did.
The bees were indeed collecting on the crabapple. Often a swarm will alight on a branch and then hang down in a teardrop shape; when this happens all we have to do is snip off the branch and shake the bees into the awaiting hive box. But these bees were wrapped around the tree trunk, so there was no snipping to be done. How could we encourage them to relocate to the hive box we placed atop a white sheet at the base of the tree? We had not brought our bee brush with us, but luckily I was able to borrow a basting brush from Esther. Kneeling beneath the tree I gently brushed the bees downward, and they came. Initially I wasn’t wearing my bee veil, but then I got stung right between the eyes. (This was unfortunate since I generally assert to anyone who will listen that when bees swarm they are not at all defensive and so you will never get stung. The bees that stung me missed that directive.) So I put on my bee veil and the netting kept getting snagged on the crabapple branches, making it harder to see than it is anyway when wearing a veil. And glasses.
The afternoon was waning, and certain tasks could not be ignored, not even for a swarm. So Imogene slipped back inside through the French doors and started practicing her oboe, an elegiac piece, and the bees streamed down towards the hive box, creating a shimmering and undulating new kind of bark. Some bees stood outside the box, upraised their tails and fanned outward the queen’s delicious pheromones, to lure in any stray sister. Would a clarinet have pleased them just as well? A fiddle?

The Bristol Palin dilemma

The annals of hagiography are full of young women (viz. Dymphna, Winifred, Bega, Oringa, Regina, Grimonia and countless others) who defy the parental diktat to marry and instead consecrate themselves to a life of virginity. This defiance often leads to torture, death or a life spent in drag.
But Rita of Cascia, as pious as any virgin, submitted to her father’s decree and married the vile, brutal and philandering man chosen for her. And to make it worse, the two sons she bore followed in their father’s footsteps. When the horrid husband was killed by an enemy, the sons swore to avenge his death. Rita was so appalled by this longing for vengeance that she prayed they would die rather than commit a murder.
Her prayer was answered. Her sons contracted a deadly illness; their mother’s gentle nursing brought them round to a state of contrition so they were able to die forgiven.

Saint Rita’s story begs the question: which is the surer path to sainthood: a miserable enforced marriage or sacrificial virginity?
You could certainly argue that it was her marriage that led directly to Rita praying for the death of her own sons.

There are few circumstances in which I might argue for the merits of abstinence over safe sex, but Rita’s might be one.

Oddly enough, Rita is not a patron saint of bees, though surely her claim is as good as Ambrose’s or Bernard’s, and maybe better. The story goes that a swarm of white bees flew around her sweet milk-spattered face as the infant Rita slept in her crib, that they flew in and out of her mouth and never stung her.
This would not be a very remarkable feat for honeybees who generally do not sting unless they are bothered or feeling threatened. But were these honeybees? I have never heard of or seen white honeybees.

There is more. After the death of her husband and sons, Rita finally got her wish and entered the convent. I will spare you a litany of her holiness, her suffering and the suppurating wound that inhabited her forehead. She died in the convent, on this day, in 1457 and not only is her body still incorrupt but the descendants of those bees live in the wall of the cell she died in, and each year at this time they swarm.

St Rita's body in the chapel of Cascia, Italy

Los Damnificados and Abejas asesinas - The Damned and Assassin bees

In the early excited flush of becoming beekeepers four years ago, we naturally thought that honeybees should be everywhere and could improve the quality of everything. Of course we advocated local honey for allergies and honey poultices for burns and beeswax for lip balm.
We even lobbied heavily for the introduction of honeybees to Aquiares, our favorite coffee finca in Costa Rica. Our research showed that honeybee pollination could increase the coffee yield by 7%, which is not insignificant. (It could be an additional 1750 quintals.) An excellent idea. Except that it was not. Management told us that if they were to install honeybees on the finca, they might have more coffee but they would have no one to pick it; the pickers would refuse to come.
Since 1957, when 29 Tanzanian queens escaped from a lab in Brazil, Africanized hybrid bees have been making their way north at the rate of about 200 miles a year. By now virtually all the honeybees in Central America are Africanized. A single Africanized bee collecting nectar from a coffee flower is no more frightening than one of our friendly Italian bees, but en masse and when defending their hive, the Africanized bees are ferocious and aggressive. The American press calls them Killer Bees, which of course beekeepers find objectionable and highly alarmist.

In Spanish they are called Abejas Asesinas. Assassin Bees.

Here is an Abeja asesina alighting on an orange flower whose name I do not know. (Which distresses me.) Note that when they are out and about conducting their honeybee business, the Abejas asesinas are no more ferocious than any others. I was close enough to take this photo, and was not stung. Q.E.D.


Language matters.
While “Killer bees” sounds theatrical and histrionic, like fodder for a horror film, “Assassin bees” sounds deliberate, like suicide bombers. Which is not far off given that the word assassin originally derives from the Arabic hasisi or hashish eater, because the Islamic sect of that name were said to imbibe hashish before heading out to murder, or assassinate.

About a week before we visited Costa Rica there was an earthquake near Volcan Poas and the mudslides it precipitated caused enormous damage and at least 28 fatalities. In Spanish the victims of a natural disaster like that are called LOS DAMNIFICADOS. If you happen to be in Spanish speaking country when there is a natural disaster, in every newspaper you open you will see, in two inch thick black type: DAMNIFICADOS.
Now even though my Spanish is adequate (barely) and I know what damnificado means (victim) I read the DAMN and my mind leaps to the DAMNED and DAMNATION - conditions that are, yes, wretched and fraught with implied judgment.
That was what happened when I was in Nicaragua right after Hurricane Mitch, and again this past week after the Poas earthquake.
Empresa privada dona 13 contenedores para damnificados
Damnificados reciben 15.000 paquetes de comida
Tos, alergias y depresión enferman a damnificados
And so on.