May 25, 2024
I haven’t been able to contemplate the bee invasion and subsequent rescue with anything but anxiety since the little critters set up a colony in an outside wall here in mid-April. For days before the removal, I could hear their ominous hum coming from the fireplace, and compulsively checked to see if more strays were crawling around on the carpet. The bees are long gone, but the large, awkwardly situated access hole at the second story level remains, and contractors aren’t eager to fix it.
Yesterday I had a brief moment, a reprieve from anxiety, to marvel that the bees chose our house—lucky us—to invade. They must have left some sort of blessing in their wake.
*****
I’ve never been one of those people who goes gaga over the bee species. I’m vaguely aware that there would basically be nothing without them. The hive colony collapse is worrisome worldwide. Without bees, plants would not propagate. Without plants, the rest of us would gradually go bye-bye, at least in my largely uninformed understanding. Vitally important, bees are.
But that doesn’t mean I want them setting up shop in our house. What made the explorer bee think that chimney-adjacent space would be an ideal spot for its colony? Perhaps it sensed, in the portion of the Universal Mind where it can access my thoughts, that this—the third bee invasion we’ve had—would not end like the others, when I called in an exterminator. After the last time, a friend told me about a local bee rescue and removal service. If there was ever another invasion, I could call them and do the humane thing.
*****
Nick Wigle of Super Bee Rescue arrived in the early evening the day I discovered the swarm, striding into the house with the scent of woodsmoke wafting about him, an elfin brightness in his blue eyes. He had already checked outside (“Yep, they’re established, we’re going to have to knock a hole to remove the colony”). He pinpointed the colony’s exact location using a specialized infrared sensor; the pulsing red glow on his phone screen reminded me of Dante’s Inferno, burning with a hot, bright lust.
He assured us there was no urgency now that the colony was settled, and said he’d return with his specially outfitted custom rig and plethora of equipment to safely remove the bees. When he left, I handed him a check and he handed me a jar of honey. “Thank you,” we both said.
*****
I’m not sure what message there is in this situation. Bees have lovely metaphysical meanings, but it’s hard to feel blessed when their visitation is both costly and anxiety-producing.
I reach for wonder and gratitude. Wonder that there’s such an abundance of bees they’re choosing non-natural places to colonize. Gratitude that my heart overruled my pocketbook and refused to kill these beautiful beings.
“‘Bees are incredibly intelligent and incredibly sweet,’ [Nick] said. ‘People realize bees are not out to kill —they’re more like cows with wings.'” *
I don’t think I will ever see bees as little cows with wings. But perhaps I can see them, not as an enemy invader, but as creatures coexisting beneficially on the planet, headed for 5D and a time when there will never be a need for bees to colonize anywhere but their most natural and benevolent of habitats, in the woods and in the wild.
*”Santa Barbara’s Bee Whisperer,” Santa Barbara Independent, 7/27/17, Independent.com/2017/07/27/santa-barbaras-bee-whisperer/