Bees Through the Looking Glass

The bees at the museum where I work began to die last fall. More generally, bees were struggling nationwide (and may be still, though it’s early in the spring and hard to tell).

My writings about the museum bees became a full-length essay called “Undertaking at Dawn” that recently won me some cool cash and accolades from the English Department at KU. An avid recycler, I plan to post parts of the essay here, tucking them in wherever they fit.

At that time, I wrote about them quietly, hushed, with a funeria air. Monitoring the beehive had become part of my morning routine, as much as coffee, the newspaper, and the anticipation of the challenges of the day. The deaths of those tiny pollinators pricked at my conscience, urging me to respond in a way I hadn’t determined to be feasible, at least not then.

Glass separated me from the bees in the museum’s hive exhibit. I marveled at their efficient, ordered lives. Through the glass, I observed their dances, their comings and goings, their honey-making. One day they wobbled as if drunk. Several were sick and and I knew, likely to die. I watched a bee haul one of its dying brethren up the wall of glass to the hive exit and heave it outside. The dying bee rotated in incremental feeble circles on the windowsill and struggled to stand. Wings deformed by disease, it could not fly.

Without the glass between us, I probably would not be as concerned for the bees’ welfare, and more concerned for my own; flying, stinging creatures have always unnerved me. Instead, I regarded them fondly and worried over their decreasing numbers.