Seven Sisters

I woke early on Monday morning, 3:45 am, to pick up the swarm I had caught the previous afternoon.  I wait until the middle of the night to get them so they have a chance to settle in and calm down.  Robert was waiting for me with a flashlight.  He said that his cat had just been rubbing up against the top bar hive box containing the bees.  Of course.  Kitties know good energy.

We peeked in the side window to find all the bees happily clustered together, and then we gently loaded the box in the back of my truck.  It would be a deliberate careful drive, with flashers on, through the pre-dawn Alamosa downtown to the bees' new home at the Cruzenberger Farm.

After we loaded the box, we noted the sun was just starting to warm the eastern sky. A planet was just visible above Mount Blanca--Venus? Mars? --and Robert pointed out the Seven Sisters constellation just above and to the right of the bright planet. That's how I decided the name of this newest hive--more like seventy-thousand sisters.

I thought for a moment about how constellations only make sense from our present perspective in this swirling galaxy among swirling superstructures, and that a moment can be a long time in terms of cultural memory as societies name constellations and pass the stories on to grandchildren. The moment outlives lifetimes yet is still transitory.

I also reflected on how swarm catching is all about gratitude and wonder. Robert was grateful that I was removing bees which might have stung his allergic-to-stings wife.  He was also grateful to the bees and didn't want mosquito pesticides to harm them. I was grateful that Calvin had given Robert my number when he had mentioned his swarm conundrum. I'm also grateful that Robert called me rather than an exterminator.  And the bees?  Dare I anthropomorphize them?  It seemed as if they *wanted* to be caught and taken away.  They were a few feet from the parking area--almost like I could have pulled up to the swarm, leaned out the window like I was ordering through a drive through, clipped the branch, and dropped them gently into my lap. 

Gratitude: the family farm is happy to receive the little pollinators.  The kids were eager to see the queen--I told them they would have to wait a little while to let everyone settle in.  I need to order a kid-sized bee suit.

It's all one big lovefest.

And Wonder: how amazing is it that the bees do what they do, and that they allow humans to interact with them as we do?  At one moment during the catch, I had lowered the branch into the box and was suddenly surrounded by a galaxy of bees swirling around me, bees who themselves were wondering what was going on.  And yet not a single one tried to sting me.  I could learn a lot from that sort of go-with-the-flow attitude and trust.