Black Honey

I’m going to have to wrap you in duct tape the first time. It’s as much for the nerves as for any practical function. We’ll wind it round the places where your thick cotton pants are tucked into your rubber boots and your goatskin leather gloves cinch around your elbows. Seal away any trace of skin, any gaps to the outside world. Reassure yourself—there’s no way they could possibly get you now. They most certainly can get you now, but let’s not focus on that. Besides the gloves, the veil is the most important part. Make sure the zipper is pulled as tight as possible to the side and stick a peel of duct tape on it too, for good measure. Watch the world become hazy and strange and gray beyond the wall of mesh. As sealed up as you’ll get, it’s time to go. Outside, you’ll find the heat and humidity of the Arkansas summer is nearly unbearable. The best time to check on them is, tragically, in the heat of the day, when the majority will be out foraging. Your fingers will swell with boiling blood, rendered bloated and red and clumsy on the acre-long walk down a green, sloping hill out to the hives. They’re three small, charming things—white boxes with wood-lined roofs to give them the appearance of cottages—nestled about ten feet apart from each other in the shade-dappled line of forest curving against the open field of my backyard. They’re all faced east, to better nudge the bees into action as soon as the sun rises. My hives are set a little lower than most, but that’s only because I’m shorter than most; they’re waist-high, for ease of access. The sound of buzzing is incomprehensible, loud at even twenty feet away but nearly deafening when you stand before a hive itself. I always knock on the side of their hive to announce my presence. I’d feel bad about disturbing them, but I think they’ve gotten used to my intrusions. There are terrible things that can happen to hives if we don’t check in on them every week or so—parasites, new queens born to wage civil war, diseases. It’s my job and joy to keep my fuzzy little friends safe. The humming inside rises to a high, whining pitch until I waft my hand across the entrance, my familiar scent floating within. The majority of bee communication is conducted not solely through dance, as you may have heard, but by pheromones. They have excellent senses of smell, with over fifteen glands for producing chemical messages to each other. I always wonder if that’s the reason they aren’t disturbed to climb and crawl and press against each other in such dim, claustrophobic conditions—it’s the only way they can spread their gaseous message so efficiently, the scent rubbing off of one small, fuzzy body to the next, traveling through the dark hive. They’ll probably find you and your strange smell frightening, may even attack, but stay calm; they’ll get used to you. I used to have to mummify myself in white cotton and gray tape, but all I wear now is a pair of old gardening gloves, my legs and shoulders bared to the burning heat of the day in hand-me-down cut-offs and tank tops worn thin with age. Besides, bees can sense weakness. Do you like the hives? I inherited my oldest from an elderly man at my church. He wrapped me up in duct tape, opened a box to a cloud of whirling, buzzing black and gold, and I fell in love instantly. He had wild, brambly bushes in his backyard, studded with white flowers, and I swear the honey from that hive tastes like blackberry syrup. The two other hives were birthday presents. I built their boxes and roofs myself, carving the slats of wood and drilling in eye hooks for the bungee cords bolted to the brick bases I laid one hot May afternoon; they’re so solid not even the tornados that tend to howl through can disturb the bees. The raccoons are another story, but those little jerks have opposable thumbs, so I’ve written them off as an act of God. We might have to use our hive tools to get in; bees are notoriously industrious, and I suspect mine put in overtime. Any gaps in the hive, no matter how small, are sealed over with propolis, also known as bee glue. It’s a thick, golden mixture of beeswax and pollen, less sticky than you would expect. Run your hive tool—a flat L-shape of metal with a sharp end and a hooked one—along the edge where the roof of the hive meets the body, wiggling gently, ‘til you feel it give away. The humming will intensify, excitement brewing as they realize what’s happening. Here, hold the smoker for me. It’s already smoldering, the fire inside slowly consuming the dried pine needles and leaves and tall, dead grasses we collected earlier. More bees than usual will come out now, upset and alert for threats to their beloved queen, but just give them a gentle puff of smoke. It doesn’t drug them, as that slanderous Jerry Seinfeld movie would have you believe, but it does conjure instinctual memories of fire, of danger, of the need to return home and protect it from whatever is menacing. When I lift the lid to the hive, moving with aching slowness and care, don’t be startled by the strange smell—cloyingly thick and sweet, but with something earthy inside. The smell of honey and pollen and wax and rot and new births and venom and sweat and dusty crumbling death. Bees cling to every surface, latched on with their clever barbed hooked feet. Do you see the ones with pollen clinging to their legs? There are a lot of them now, shocked and affronted at the sudden intrusion of fresh air, no matter how many times we do this. Give them a little puff of smoke, just to settle them down. Looking down, it’s a dark pit, criss-crossed by pale birch slats of wood. We need our hive tools again, repeating the same process of scraping away the propolis bridging frames together and plowing up the wax sticking up like so many stalagmites on the edges of the box. Don’t throw it away once it’s glued itself to the sharp end of your hivetool. Roll it into a ball between your clumsy gloved fingers and stick it into the pocket of your white smock. People always get the value of bee hives wrong. Sure, honey is great, and honey from my hive is the best I’ve ever tasted, but my bees are a little too delicate to harvest whole frames of honey at a time; I only steal tastes now and again. It’s propolis that’s the real treasure. It rubs into your skin like a dream, leaving it smooth and perfectly moist, no matter how flaky it was before. Two drops of food coloring and a stick of propolis makes the most lovely lip balm you’ve ever seen. People eat propolis in powders, in waxes, in supplements for all sorts of things—to reduce bloating, to delay cell damage, to prevent cancer, to ward off bacteria, to heal wounds faster. I remain skeptical on nearly all of those, but I’ll admit to smearing propils onto stings on the rare occasion I get them; it takes the itch away faster than anything else. Now we can pull out a frame of honeycomb. Put your fingers to the top of the wooden slat, making sure you don’t squeeze one of the tens of thousands of bees swarming all over the frames, your hands, up your arms, and gently, slowly lift it. It’s hard to see with so many bees buzzing around, isn’t it? They cling to the golden comb, to the wooden edges of the frame, to each other, tightly; it must be strange to be so close, so cloistered, then suddenly emerge into the open air. There’s a fat, heavy mass of them on the bottom, like a water drop seconds from falling off a leaf. They’re a hypnotic mass of activity, and every tiny action sends up a mass of sound, of heat. Even in the baking sunshine, even with most of them gone to forage for pollen, even through your glove, they radiate more intense, humid, sticky heat than anything you’ve ever felt. Your palms and fingers will be slick with sweat inside your leather gloves. Don’t drop the frame—though that’s more for your safety than theirs. Still, don’t worry. My bees are all honey bees, known for their sweet temperament and social natures—each hive numbering anywhere from thirty to sixty thousand. They’re of a more delicate nature than their cousins, the killer bee. Visually, there isn’t much of a difference, but I can tell either type of hive at a glance. Killer bee hives are much smaller, at only about fifteen thousand, and they’re meaner than wasps. I was once called out to do an inspection of a beehive that had infested the roof of a local school, and I nearly fell off the ladder when a swarm of hundreds came after me with roaring fury. My sweet bees will only attack you a dozen or so at a time. Once you have a good grasp on the frame, without letting go, jerk it down as hard and fast as you can. Their buzz turns affronted, confused, and a little ticked off, all at once—something like an annoyed alarm clock going off mid-afternoon. I’ll settle them with some smoke. Examine the frame for me. With the heaving mass of bees gone, you can see the waxy comb. Each frame is equipped with only a hollow outline of wood and two wires, stretched lengthwise across it. I put in new frames when the hive is outgrowing the ones provided, starting to build on the ceiling and walls, and they can fill it out with geometrically perfect hexagons in less than three days. Hold it up to the baking sunshine and look. There are two types of frames—storage and brood. Storage frames will be heavier, the cells in the middle glistening in the light with gold and mahogany and black honey. The colors jumble together, each different depending on what sorts of pollen the bee who made it used. I have a tiny wooden spoon, just enough to pull out a taste without damaging the waxen cells. Here, try some. I prefer black honey, derived from sweet pine and honeydew. It’s richer, thicker, more lush than weak yellow clover honey or brash orange citrus honey. Extending radially from the center of the frame, you find pockets of amber and gold pollen stored for later use, and then, at the very edge, bright orange bee bread—a processed mix of that same pollen and bee saliva, used for feeding the newest and weakest of the hive. Speaking of, it’s brood frames—those that hold developing bees—that are the real treat. Her Majesty the queen herself travels from one to the next sequentially, laying eggs into cells and carefully capping them up. Storage frames are just frames where the majority of brood has hatched, leaving gaping cells, ready for a brisk cleaning then fresh-baked bee bread. Brood frames are lighter, filled with the delicate beginnings of life in their warm, protected center. The bees are more aggressive when you shake them off this sort of frame; they don’t like being separated from their children. Hold it up. You can see them there, backlit by the sun—tiny, lumpy c-shaped silhouettes. Baby bees, curled up in their hive’s cells like humans curl up in the womb. They’re beautiful. If we’re lucky, we’ll see a pupa emerge from its cell, becoming an adult along the way. They gnaw their way out from inside the cell, the waxy covering of propolis becoming their first, nourishing meal. They emerge slowly, then all at once: huge eyes seeing pure light for the first time; wet, unused antenna peeling away from their delicate, triangular heads; fragile wings drying in the heat of the bees suddenly swarming around them, eager to meet their new sister. Even among thirty-thousand, the arrival of one more is an event to be celebrated. Of course, as we pull out each frame and inspect them individually, be on the lookout for anything that seems off. Scan the back of each bee for a shining red surface, like a wound just scabbed over, the size and shape of a sesame seed: hive mites. They’re nasty little parasites, ones that slip into cells with developing larvae and eat the babies before they can even hope to emerge. They take over the cell themselves, using it as a sick, parasitic breeding ground. Instead of new life, a wave of sickness and death emerges. Luckily, they’re easy to kill, if you catch them early. That’s why we have to look at every frame with such care, to turn it over gently in our hands and feel the rattle in our bones, to not let our eyes glaze over with the mesmerizing swarm of yellow and black. If we see a hive mite, run back inside the house, and do your best not to be staggered by the sudden coolness and quiet. (A few bees will follow you all the way home. Don’t mind them, they’re just curious.) Pull powdered sugar and a sieve out of the cabinets. All we have to do is gently sprinkle the powdered sugar over the hive, cloying everything with a white, sweet powder that makes the fuzzy backs of bees impossible for the mites to cling to with their cruel, suctioned grip. The mites will fall down through the open grating that lays beneath the hive. When we close up the hive, all we must do is slide out the tray underneath and throw the little parasites in the smoker. They burn well. Speaking of unwelcome guests, there will, inevitably, be a bee inside your suit. Bees are notoriously good at slipping into small spaces, and at least one will be curious enough to join you, no matter how much duct tape you wasted earlier. Don’t panic. Or, rather, panic all you want, long as you don’t breathe. Carbon dioxide makes the bees agitated, angered, and we really do not want that. One angry bee signals the others, a cloying cloud of pheromones that, oddly enough, smells like overripe bananas. (Do try to limit your potassium intake before you open the hive, by the way. Sorry, I should’ve told you that one earlier.) Step away from the hive, moving oh-so slowly so as to not agitate your visitor. She (for they’re all she’s, at least the ones who can sting; don’t worry about the men—they’re only good for reproduction before dying off in the winter) will sense that she’s getting further away from the hive. Bees have wonderful homing senses and a powerful instinct to return home whenever anything is amiss—introverts at their finest. When you’re far enough away that no other bees are buzzing around you with curiosity, tentatively remove the gray tape holding your veil in place and hold your breath, hoping she doesn’t deem you a threat—so far from the hive and still. With all luck, she’ll fly off, back on her merry way. Of course, there’s no guarantee this will work. Maybe she’s angry that day, maybe you smell too much of potassium, maybe you twitch involuntarily. Something happens, and, at that point, you get stung. Listen, I never promised the process would be painless. Anyway, stingings aren’t as bad as you think. They’re practically nothing more than a twitch after the first fifty or so. There are places on my hands that are permanently numbed and hardened from stings. It’s said bee venom helps with arthritis, that it ironically acts as a soothing anti-inflammatory—one sharp prick in exchange for a lifetime of ease. The scientists are torn over this, but every eighty-something I’ve ever met at beekeeper association meetings swears by it. At any rate, I hardly ever receive the flashes of pain—bright and hot and startling—anymore. Which is to say, my skin no longer swells after a sting. I think the venom is a part of me. If I am stung, the sharper agony is the loss of another one of my buzzing friends. They can’t survive a sting; all the vital organs attached to their stingers fall out through the dull nub of their abdomen. Their innards are more delicate than you think, stuck to a tiny thorn embedded in your skin, trailing after it, gossamer, like an errant puff of gray-pink cotton candy. If we’re very lucky, we may see the queen. Each hive has its own—Georgia, for the state we got her from; Nefer-bee-ti, for the Egyptian queen; and, of course, Eliza-bee-th, who has outlasted her namesake. I’m very glad bees don’t understand English, or I’d be afraid Georgia would be devastated by her exclusion from the naming scheme. If bees were smarter, though, I think the queen would be devastated by much more important things than her name. To the hive, the queen is everything. She is their reason for existence, the thing they must protect with their lives, the very reason why one would choose to sting and die—just to protect her. To her hive, she is a strange, otherworldly thing. She is the only one who can have children, and she does so at a remarkable rate, fast enough to sustain a hive of up to sixty thousand. She is nearly twice the size of her subjects, with a longer torso, bigger eyes, darker and more delicate stripes. Everywhere she goes, the hive shifts and rumbles in response. We can find her on a frame by letting our eyes unfocus, finding the place where all the bees move out radially, as if she is a great stone thrown into a still pond. Every other bee is trampled over carelessly by the others, without malice or thought, just as it too steps over others in its duties. No one would ever dare step over the queen. She is a strange, lone spot of sovereign stillness in the bustle of the hive. She is everything to her hive because, in the end, she is all they will ever know. She is the crux of the hive’s pheromonal controls, able to change moods and behaviors of the entire hive at a whim. They are addicted to her, unwilling to leave the hive for too long and always knowing where to return to because of her siren call. And, of course, she will outlast them all. A drone bee, meant only for reproductive duties, leaves the place of his birth within six days to seek a queen to mate with. He’ll die within minutes or hours of completing his task. A worker bee goes about her diligent business—tending to the children, gathering water to cool the hive, warding off invaders—for six weeks in the summer. A queen bee lives for up to five years. She is, to them, functionally immortal. She watches something like forty-two generations of her children wither and die around her, working themselves to death for her benefit. Don’t worry if we don’t see the queen as we look through the frames. A healthy, happy hive can only exist if there is a healthy, happy queen. At least, I like to tell myself she’s happy. I like to imagine I have something to do with it, even. The young bees, after all, cannot get used enough to me in their short lifetimes to be settled by my scent, as the hive often is. She’s the one who remembers me, who sends out a soothing pheromonal signal in my presence. Maybe to her, I am an odd, familiar presence, bringing fresh water and clearing out pests and smoothing the ragged edges of hardened wax away. Maybe to her, I am the strange, otherworldly thing caring for the hive. Maybe to her, I am the only friend she can keep. When we’ve inspected every frame, we have to put it back carefully. You can slowly lower it into place; I’ll gently push the bees out of the way with my nubby, garden-gloved fingers. It feels like joy when a bee vibrates gently under your hand, a jolt of something pure and primal and ancient, right beneath your fingertips. We need to push all the frames together when we’re done, making the job of building their propolis bridges back up a little easier for them. The wood is already tacky; it won’t be too hard, for such busy workers. Bees cling in my hair, on my shoulders, on the mesh of your veil as we lift the pointed roof of the hive together, carefully, slowly putting it in place, so we don’t crush anyone. Don’t mind them—they’re placid, gentle. Their buzz is low and soothing, like a mindless hum as you go about your day. I think they’re just saying goodbye. When the sun is slipping behind the horizon, when the majority of my bees are being called home by centuries of instinct, I go out to the hive, barefoot in the tall grass. I sit or lay down in the clover before the hive—heedless of the perpetually-muddy ground hiding beneath the verdant cover. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, listening to a rumbling buzz that drowns out all thoughts. The clover brushes my bare legs gently, the sweet breeze sticky and warm like a balm. The hair on the back of my neck prickles, goosebumps rising as bees fly heedlessly past me, inches away, as if I am just another part of the scenery, just another part of the hive. When I breathe it in, the air tastes like black honey.