I was hesitant to share this story so soon after it happened, but there is an element of community resilience in it that I think makes it worth telling.
On Monday, Frank and I had a run-in with our backyard bees.
That’s the polite way to say it.
A more accurate description: We were harvesting honey, and the bees got their revenge.
Our backyard hive had gotten fairly large over the past two years. We didn’t harvest honey last year, so we knew the supers would be full. It’s a task that takes a lot of work, and we should have done it when the weather was cooler.
Alas, if we didn’t do it this week, it wasn’t going to get done, so we made plans for Honey Day on Monday. We had a good breakfast and then suited up, each of us making sure the other’s suit didn’t have any holes in it.
We got to work carefully pulling the frames out of the boxes, keeping an eye out for the queen and the brood, or eggs, that the bees might have laid in the honeycomb.
Even though I had a great-uncle who was a beekeeper, I know very little about beekeeping. Frank’s dad kept bees, so he’s the one who started a backyard hive about eight years.
He’s the one in charge of the whole operation, but I’ve been fully supportive over the years. I know he has loved carrying on this tradition of his dad’s. Both of the kids have helped at times, and although it seemed like a somewhat risky hobby, it didn’t seem dangerous.
Things were going smoothly on Monday, but then a bee snuck into Frank’s suit, so he had to leave the area to get it out. I kept working, feeling proud of myself for staying calm in the middle of the buzzing that seemed louder than I remember it being before.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Invisible Thread to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.