An Apian motif

Perhaps your holidaze had a theme. Perhaps not.
One of the more bizarre aspects of beekeeping is discovering the enormous amount of bee-themed tchotchkes there are out there. I should have known.
But first some history: Many years ago we had bulldogs. My former mother-in-law’s family had kept bulldogs since the blustery day they hopped onto Plymouth Rock.
Initially I was terrified by the family bulldogs (growling, large protruding teeth, general bulk) but later I merely found them hideous. That too passed, as do so many aversions, and I grew to love the bulldogs so fervently that we eventually got one, and then another of our own.
By then I considered them to be the loveliest and wisest of creatures. I admired their ability to sleep all day, and I was in awe of the trajectory their drool could achieve by a simple shake of their enormous heads. Additionally impressive was the complete inability of a bulldog to survive ‘in the wild’. Not only were bulldogs pups always delivered by C-section, on account of their heads being too wide for the birth canal, but also insemination had to be effected artificially, on account of the impossibility of the male bulldog completing the act without getting stuck.

Not having grown up with dogs, I was blissfully unaware of the breed-specific paraphernalia that comes with them. I learned. While we had bulldogs, every Christmas and many birthdays were accompanied by gifts of dubious taste portraying bulldogs on a variety of objects. Objects with which you had never before associated bulldogs. Therefore I do not mention porcelain figurines of Union-Jack wearing bulldogs or prints of bulldogs playing poker. No, I am referring to bulldog paper towel dispensers, and bulldog doorstops and footstools, bulldog lamps, earrings, gravy boats, andirons, scissors, bath mats and candy jars.
You get the idea.

Our last bulldog died in 2002. By then I was divorced; acquiring another bulldog would have felt presumptuous.

Besides which, CSB, kind though he was with the late Billie, was not a bulldog aficionado. A year or so later we got 2 springer spaniels who do not seem to inspire themed gift giving.
Then came the bees.
Again, I should have predicted.
But I will insist that the decorative use of bees is intrinsically more tasteful than that of bulldogs. The Cretans made gold earrings in the shape of honey-dripping bees. Napoleon took bees as his symbol, and Empire furniture and fabric are thereby much adorned with their elegant shape.


Viz. Napoleon’s velvet robes in this portrait by Ingres.

That was a long and roundabout introduction to what was meant to be a short and pithy homage to our bee themed gifts this past Christmas: the finger puppets, wind-up toy, candle-holder, hooks, toiletry case, note cards and of course the soap. I love the soap.






In case you are wondering, sometimes I receive hagiographic gifts but these are fewer, and beloved CSB does not find them remotely as entertaining as I do. (Saint Theresa of Avila in a snow globe? What is not to like?)

Observation Hive, redux

The Observation Hive is back.
All winter long, I knew I was missing the bees and missing the myriad and many sided (six) consolations of their industrious buzz at the north end of the living room; but now that it is back again and thousands of bees are again in residence, I realize how very much I missed it.


Perhaps it is foolhardy or even delusional to think that we can keep an O-hive happily all year long. In order to be observed, the glass hive is only one frame deep and so while there is a Queen performing her regal duties, there can never be the population of a normal hive (60,000 this time of year) and so it seems they cannot make sufficient stores to get through the winter.
Which is not to say I will not continue trying to observe bees all year long.

Last year, after a great season of foraging, waggling, dancing, propagating and honey-making, the hive died one cold October weekend.
It was a very Bad Mother/beekeeper moment.
We had to remove the glass and discard all their tiny deceased apian bodies. How much do 5000 dead bees weigh? Less than 5000 living bees. That is my unscientific, unverified observation.

Yesterday morning, CSB took 1 Queen, about 3000 bees, 3 brood frames and 1 honey-filled frame from a nuc box he’s been nurturing for this very purpose, and installed them in the Observation Hive. Then we loaded said hive up into the back seat of the car (not as easy as it sounds) and headed north to Lyndhurst for the Hudson River Fest. For 8 hours we explained Bees 101 to adults and countless small children. (In truth, CSB did most of the explaining; I was fanning myself.)

56 children located the Queen (she’s painted with a blue dot to facilitate this).
4 adults confided that they were either allergic to bees or had been stung and hospitalized
1 man, on his way to meet his motorcycle in Odessa, used to keep bees in Thermopylae, Wyoming

Then we brought the hive home and set it in its proper place.

The first known reference to an observation hive is in the Natural History of Pliny (23-78 AD). He told the story – probably apocryphal – that Aristotle inserted a piece of transparent stone, probably mica, into a bee hive, in order to watch the bees at work. But the bees were so indignant at the invasion of their privacy that they obscured the glass with ‘clay’. (It was most likely propolis – a remarkable sticky substance good for everything from sealing up a hive to curing laryngitis - and the bees will certainly fill in any available space beyond their requisite ‘bee-space’). Not just any creature foils Aristotle.

Have I mentioned how happy I am that Observation Hive is back?