Note: This post is part of excerpts from an essay I wrote in 2007, part of my continuing experiment. Here’s part one.
Most days in the winter, when the daylight hours are shortened by the tilt of the Earth, I steal up to my 6th floor museum office and turn on my computer in the dark. I do not turn on any overhead lights; they interfere with first light of dawn. The glow of the computer screen reflects against the darkened easterly windows. Usually, about the time the first glimmer of sun pierces the gauzy gray of early morning, I leave my desk to refill my coffee and check in on the bees.
One of the perks that I did not anticipate when I accepted a job in a museum was the freedom to be in its hallways before visitors in the early hours. If the sun is not fully above the horizon or the staff has not turned on the exhibit lights, I can revel in the creepy character of the birds and mammals frozen in time by taxidermy. They live in perpetual motion, wings spread or paws raised, in decades-old dioramas titled “Our National Bird” and “Life on the Great Plains.”
Some days, I take the long route to the bees by wandering through the dimly lit, arched hallways, first past the exhibit about the waning life of the Kansas River, then by the coyote, the fox and rabbits. I detour past the live snake exhibit. The snakes, too, are kept behind glass. The background surroundings of their dwellings are painted in shocking kaleidoscope colors that attempt to portray glowing sunsets, wavy grasses and pointy purple mountains. The snakes are still but alert, keenly aware of the lack of children tapping at their glass in the early morning hours.
Around the corner from the reptiles and fish is the synthetic bee tree. It stretches from floor almost to ceiling, but a girth of more than five feet in diameter makes its trunk look much more stout. Somehow, its sculptor forged a plasticine chemical cocktail into natural ridges resembling tree bark, limbs and exposed roots. The north and south sides of the tree cut away to reveal the hive inside.
In the tree, two lamps illuminate the bees building their rich honeycomb. They have constructed their home into four double-sided frames stacked vertically through the tree’s midsection. At its widest points, the hills of comb extend outward from the frame to smash against the glass enclosure. Most of the bees cluster on the side of the tree that leads to their exit tube, a plastic highway cemented between hive and window. My favorite place to stand in the morning is near exit tube, and listen. I can hear a gentle vibrating gshzzz. A bee pulse. -jen
You really write a great description. Love those bees.