Bee Alert!

Published in “Zooanthology” Steve Carr, 2022

Last spring I was doing my thing: round dancing and waggling, really getting into it. No sooner had I said, “Hey guys! Get a load of this amazing Echinacea purpurea!” when humans in white balloons loomed up out of nowhere. The next thing I knew I was face planted in a wood box surrounded by wire. Can you say no escape possible? But I was not your typical Apis mellifera. I could take life’s ups and downs. I would not call my new habitat the Waldorf Historia, but this human-hive was clean, safe and warm. And I’ve always wanted to travel but somehow – with all the work that I do – I never had the time.

The humans had even arranged structured recreation for us every day, my favorite being Game of Smells. My BFs and I played this for months, and geez Louise, were we ever good at choosing colors! Never in my life had I eaten so well with so little energy expended. The humans hovering about exclaimed: “This one’s a fast learner — I can’t wait to pick his brain!” Literally.

But all good things must to an end. “In the interests of science,” the lead melittologist said one day, gloomily. “So that more of you will survive into the future.” Small comfort for those with recent head and thorax separations. But for some reason the melittologist had grown fond of me (I was a damn smart bee! cute too!) and she shooed me out of the lab, crying: “Go bee, go!”

It is very unusual to find a bee with an institutional memory. Most of us die in the summer. We actually work ourselves to death carrying pollen and nectar from flowers to hive, sometimes over a distance of miles. Yet I was fortunate during my months of captivity to gain not only insight into the human mind, but gain an awareness of the world’s fragility. I knew what Class Insecta were up against, it wasn’t just the honey-addicted Ursus americanus waking up after hibernation, or varooa mites, no, it was more encompassing. It was climate change. Planet and plant destruction. As a bee with a brain, and some longevity, I was incentivized.

Next spring, when our hollowed-out tree hive was nearing 90 degrees, I said adios to my mates.

“Godspeed forager bee!” they buzzed. “May the weeds be with you!”

My grounds of choice, a mere 300 feet from our forested habitat, was an entire backyard of dandelions, or Dandelion Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae family. I can’t begin to describe how sweet it is to have fresh pollen and nectar after being cooped up with 30,000 other pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates all winter! Sure, we’re all buddies, we work together, but still. Just thinking about those dandelions jiggled my compound eyes, and fired up those sluggish synaptic spaces.

The backyard was a bright yellow carpet, accented with some other minor weeds. The smells invigorated my fuzzy body, positively charging me, and I knew deep within my heart this would be a 200-dandelion day. Knocking pollen off of antlers was my thing. I began visualizing the pollen sticking to my fuzzy body, moving down to the scopa on my hind legs. I was getting in the groove, starting my first spring honeybee dance, when I heard a monstrous truck, and its tank sloshing with liquid, pull into the neighbor’s driveway. I’m not a specialist, but a polytectic bee meaning I can collect pollen from many flower types, but in early spring, there ain’t much blooming except for those dear sweet dandelions. As a man exited the truck, I felt the vibrations from his heavy steps. Already noxious chemicals seeping from his clothes and skin poisoned the air. When you see a human hoisting up a backpack, its container labeled with a skull-and- crossbones, and the spray nozzle of death in his hand, you can predict that nothing good will come of this.

I’ve never understood the allure of those monotonous green stalks. Sure, the grubs, Chinch bugs and sod webworms will call grass home. But why do humans expend so much effort on those tiny plants of miniscule, nutritional value? Green concrete. Why favor the prosaic and dull over the unusual, and life-giving tapestry of mouthwatering, impromptu weeds?

“Really small amounts,” the booted human said. “Won’t hurt a fly. Everything degrades within 24 hours.”

No way. Who was he kidding? What about us bees? Not to mention lady bugs, ground beetles, lacewings and spined soldier bogs: the invisible and underappreciated stewards of the ecosystem. As a learned-bee, I knew the Weed and Feed was not an innocuous N-P-K fertilizer, no, the lawn caregivers snuck in lethal amounts of imidacloprid and neonicotinoids. It’s not easy being a bee fighting mites, disease, appendage-chilling temperatures and aggressive bees from far-away lands. Now this. And right in my own backyard.

I needed some stability because the neonicotinoids were already weakening my fragile nervous system, so I flew up to the gutter and sat there, waiting.

“A few ppm,” the man said. “Maybe ppb.”

Yeah, well you’re 280-pounds!

Suddenly, a woman with a straw hat hightailed it out of the house with the yellow carpet. I recognized her from last year. She launched into a speech about the lowly creatures, how if we no longer existed, there would be no squash, fewer tomatoes. No berries. “Even low percentages can kill,” she explained. End of discussion. Everyone departed, the man out-voted, shaking his head.

Humans with their proclivity for self-destruction have always been a mystery to me. Why can’t they leave Nature be? But in a way I understood, because I gave into that burning urge to do a couple figure eights around the booted human singing: “Try and get me!” And he grunted and swiped, but those small amounts of chemicals had already enfeebled his mind.

The backyard of delectable dandelions waited. I thought I might even shake my booty and top 200 today. There was still time.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.