“Bees are in peril!” people say, aware of all the dangers the little varmints face from varroa mite, from climate change and neonicotinoid pesticides, and whatever-in-hell else may be playing into colony collapse disorder and other maladies. “Bees are important!”
And, they sure are. They pollinate flowers and fruit and make the honey and wax that keeps Burt’s Bees in business. They can also be fast, angry little pinecones.
Don’t be mistaken – it’s not that I consider human beings a superior animal. We’re not the apex of global evolutionary achievement, at least not in the sense that the world revolves around us. The planet is mostly at our disposal because of opposable thumbs and over-large brains equipped to imagine bigger and more than we can ever reasonably use, but we simply ride on the surface of Earth like everything else. And if we screw up that surface and air, it’ll simply kill us and hardly do anything to a 4.5-billion-year-old piece of astronomical rock. I do, however, have valid opinions on things that fly and sting, and those opinions are that they hurt like hell.
I don’t know what my first encounter was with bees, but growing up in the middle of the Ozarks, it must have been well before the day at the woodpile at my grandparents’ place when I was about six. Grandma was in the house or the backyard, doing whatever it was Grandma found to keep from being bored when we weren’t around to entertain her (probably performing some well-deserved ritual over a cauldron to keep us out of the house or backyard for a few years), and Grandpa and I were considering a nine-foot-tall pyramid of discarded lumber he’d made in one of the fields.
Stacked up of leftover two-by-four lengths, boards ripped off of old buildings, old table legs, small logs, and Hades-knows-what-else, this mountain of maple, oak, sycamore, pine, and much else was a trove of potential day-off summertime activity for a 55-year-old aerospace factory line worker and an overaged rugrat with no other kids living in the immediate area. For several years we made chicken roosting boxes and little ramp-ladders up to them from that pile, as well as a doghouse or two, forms to add two concrete porches to the back of the house, birdhouses, and possibly a Terminator. This hillock wasn’t the only source activity on their small farm, but it was among the more entertaining features.
Alas, for all its magical properties the pyramid could take as well as give happiness. Beneath its benign exterior lived unremoved nails and screws, jagged splinters, snakes, bugs, spiders, probably unpaired socks, et cetera. I was not to get too close to it unchaperoned, and I was never to stick my little hands or arms inside it. (That I wasn’t supposed to climb that unstable assemblage of lumber, well … I was 6, not stupid.) I guess Grandpa was as careful as he could be pulling something from it when he did, but every so often even he would swear and slap at something unseen.
One day we were contemplating Piney Pyramid when we noticed something flying around it. I don’t remember the details of how we went from “noticing” to “racing toward the house at top speed,” but I’m speculating it had something to do with Grandpa trying to dislodge a swarm with a two-by-four or an old broomstick handle. Certainly it couldn’t have been me, as no 6-year-old has ever done anything to offend wildlife.
As we sped toward the backyard, we could see Grandma on the other side of the chest-high fence. I waved my arms and called to her, yelling at her to open the gate, Grandpa on my heels. She moved swiftly, hurrying to unlatch it and let me in … and then close it swiftly between me and Grandpa. “What the hell’d you shut the gate for!?” he bellowed, working at the latch and yanking it open to push us toward the house door.
“What did she do now?” Grandma wanted to know instead. Turned out she heard me yelling and interpreted it as “PLEASE! PLEASE!”
Grandpa glared, trying to find language again. “No, BEES!” he informed her – as one stung his arm.
We’re told by experts that bees only sting to protect themselves. Fair enough. But there is no reason you can cite to me for a wasp or hornet to exist in this world.
Those little jackanapes will attack if you look at them wrong sideways from 18 feet away. If a bee gets trapped in your house it will beat its little self against the window or hang around it, as if to say, “Pardon me, chap, would you mind terribly letting me back at the flowers? There’s a good fellow.” A wasp will hang around outside your door or window just waiting for you to accidentally let it in, then brandish its stinger like a busted beer bottle and taunt you to come closer.
When I was very young I remember being at a family picnic at someone’s house. Another little girl, a cousin, was playing in the backyard and was badly stung by a hornet from a nest hanging in a tree high above her. Nobody was bothering it; it had been there for a while, and even relatives of mine had more sense than to poke at it. Another time, when I was about seven or so, my parents were mowing the yard and trimming trees for Mom’s grandmother who lived next door. Dad ran the mower over a piece of the yard where there was a hole he couldn’t see – in the ground lived a bunch of yellow jackets.
And boy, were THEY pissed. I found out how angry when my folks interrupted my playing behind our small home; one minute Ernie and Ken were duking it out on my swingset slide for Barbie’s affections, the next they were all on the ground as I dropped them in surprise at the impromptu entertainment. Mom and Dad were coming at me tearing off their shirts and pants. They threw their clothes to the ground and ran for the back door, stopping just long enough to yank me inside as well. A few minutes later, in fresh jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, Dad retrieved his gas can, a box of matches in his shirt pocket, and set off for Great-Grandma Ogle’s yard.
Two summers ago I was in the yard behind my new house when my sister spotted hornets and wisely took herself and her dogs indoors. I followed … then emerged two minutes later with a broom and eyed the little terrorists circling tauntingly around the top edge of the door. I turned sideways, Babe-Ruthed that broom up onto my shoulder, and eyed the group of three in tight formation. “Let’s rock,” I said, noticing that one hornet grew some brains and zoomed off back to its nest.
Yes, I had to go to Lowe’s to replace the glass globe over the outdoor night light. But you’d better believe the rest of the Family Sting has not dared to fly through my yard since.
July 13, 2018