I checked my calendar one morning to prick my gray cells for appointments and to be nagged by electronic reminders only to discover it is “National Honey Bee Day”. Memories of my Pops ran my trains of thoughts right off their tracks. So I take a break from noveling to rejoice in semi-sweet visions and mayhaps to scratch a few lines of a son’s recall of his father.
Pops was an apiarist. Kept bees, he did. Had hives all over the fertile floor of the Santa Maria Valley, on farm and ranch, within buzzing distance of water. Don’t know if he leased the critters out as pollinators or was just happy to have a place for them to graze.
Preparing for bumper crop years he gathered a collection of honey pots as gifts for friends and family. Good friends and close family received a pot filled with honey, which was a cure-all to rival Mentholatum and Windex. Some just got the pot.
Pops loved his bees. Named his five acres of Cuyama Valley the “Lazy B Ranch”. Crops were grown with bees in mind. Fir saplings, like the cheese we earned in payment for food bank labor, were government issued and bore the promise of pollen. All they needed was planting. And watering.
Four of these five Cuyama acres were vertical. Planting accomplished, Pops fashioned water vessels from five gallon milk containers that came fitted with hose. These were used as human borne irrigation tools. I was one of those humans who bore those tools. Up a hill, down a hill, just to face another hill.
An aficionado of all the things bees share with humanity as material or feed, from the exotic wine known to the Ancients as Mead, to the sweet goo we now call honey, Pops harvested with tender care. He never “robbed” his charges of more than they needed to sustain their own livelihood. He employed his burning burlap smoker sparingly so as not to overcome his winged wonders.
His colonies yielded a harvest of differing shades dependent on their location. These ranged from the lightness of what he called “Valley Blend“ to the molasses shades of Eucalyptus. I still have some of Pops’ honey. It granulates, then I put the jug in hot water, and it becomes fluid again. I’ve been in hot water plenty of times without such sweet outcome.
When Pops bought his acre and a half of Tehama County in Northern California the bees went with. Not many flowers were planted around the homestead on “The Bend” of the Sacramento River within sight of Mt. Lassen. Pops didn’t have much patience for “Non-Producers” in garden or statehouse. Farmland and orchard provided bounty for bee with plenty of water to cool and soothe the beast.
Barter was the local currency. Honey for walnuts, pecans, or almonds. Honey for apples. Honey for prunes. It was a lovely system. When we visited for a swapping session Pops always introduced me as his “Number One Son”. I was never around when my younger brother was introduced but knowing our Pops my bro was probably presented as his other “Number One Son”.
Yaking and negotiation lasted until lunch or supper time depending on when it started. These confabs usually took place under a fruit or nut tree, in a barn dedicated as tractor museum, or on a back porch where the Master of the Manor was allowed a “chaw ‘n spit”.
“ ‘Didja hear old man Parsons damn near drowned? Fool fell ‘outta the durned boat”. Spit.
“New folks moved into the Johnson place. Up from L.A. I heard.” You get the idea.
Politics were taboo unless they were complaints about “them BLM Bastards”, by which they meant the Federal Bureau of Land Management’s, well, uhm, management. Specification was necessary so this particular brand of bureaucrat would not confused with “them Washington Bastards”, or “them Sacramento Bastards”.
Bees have also been lauded for their political and sociological savvy. Gatherers are protected from invasion by flight deck sentries. Drones service Her Highness, the Queen, who, in turn, labors for the continuity of the hive. Old or ill queens are replaced by worker bees and drones using various methods through a practice known as “supersedure”. There is little mercy or reward for a job well done in nature. Or politics.
Beekeepers watch for signs of this kind of political and social upheaval and take steps to protect the hive as a whole. Pops often voiced his opinion that voters should adopt the practice for the good of the country. It was always a special day when a new queen arrived via the U.S. Mail. Hope was being restored to an old hive or a new one begun.
North Dakota reigns as America’s champion honey producing state. Utah boasts the title of the Bee Hive State. Some may not know that there was a time when ordinary people were tagged with a nickname based on their state of origin, like an Ohio Buckeye, or Indiana Hoosier. I am a “Webfoot”, having been born in the mists of Oregon’s coastal rain. My brother is a “Prune Picker”, born in good ‘ol sunny California.
When Pops barters honey for second-crop prunes I glean several five gallon buckets of the fruit. Pops looks at me and says, “Well sir, ‘yer a Prune Picker now"!
Hives are built of vertical sections at various heights depending on the size of the colony and their ability to produce honey. Higher sections called “supers” are where the honey for harvest is stored by the bees. The fuzzy flyers are smart enough to post the aforementioned flight deck sentries to prevent invasion by aliens from another hive. “Bouncer bees?” You bet.
The hive is, however, defenseless against robbery by man or bear. One is cocooned in white, the other furred in fuzzy brown, both impervious to the bee’s only weapon which they wield in suicidal attacks sacrificing their lives for the greater good. For man, the sting usually inflects a minor wound while the bear puts up with a mere inconvenience. But for the bee it means a miserable death.
Beekeepers wear white because, to a bee, brown means “bear”! For safety’s sake during transit, the top super usually has a brick riding on its lid to keep it from falling off and releasing the bees.
One day, as the story goes, I’m helping Pops relocate a hive. Bees are not good travelers. They are cooped up, overheated and buzzingly pissed off. As we lower the hive from the bed of Pops’ fully restored bright green ’53 Chevy pickup that he has lovingly christened “Pea Cup”, my shoulder lifts the super's lid, brick and all. Now there be bees aplenty! Angry bees.
By now the little buggers are even madder. And they are mad at me! Pops has on his whites and his gear. But there I am, trying to return the damn hive to earth without causing a bee-apocalypse while looking like Yogi the Bear, all while wearing narry a bit of personal protective equipment. I can’t let go of the hive. I can’t duck and cover. Motivated by the defense of their home against the invader, the bees have me out crittered, out armed and surrounded.
Finally we “land the Eagle” but I’m getting stung on the head by a squad of Pops’ pets. I’m getting stung a lot. And now Pops is beating the crap out of me trying to swat his bees off of my head! I flee both stinging bee and flailing paterfamilias into the safety of the “Pea Cup”. Hard to out run a bee, but I give it my all.
Suffered a bunch of barnacle like bumps and a little flush, but no permanent damage except to this day there’s a bit of buzzing in my ears now and then. On rare occasions I’m tempted to sting people sitting in congress or the statehouse. Some County Supervisors starting to look bearish to me.
My wife loves where we live, nestled betwixt sea and valley where my seafaring saltiness and her country girl sensibility unite and thrive. She loves our home, our cat and the memory of Pops and his bees. She recently set out a little trough filled with fresh, clean water for any thirsty pollinators.
Bees are great workers but lousy swimmers. Her terra cotta pond has a bee plank mounted to allow the tired gatherer to land, rest her weary wings, walk down to water’s edge on pollen laden legs and enjoy a sip. A trick my wife learned from Pops. When we sit on the patio for cocktails and chatter I look at that lovely reservoir and I see Pops, grinning behind his veiled helmet, waiting for one of his bees to buzz by. Remembering those swatting hands bouncing off my skull I am sometimes tempted to duck and run. Alas there is no “Pea Cup” in which to escape.
When I die that jug of granulated honey in the cupboard above the cook top will still be there. Maybe I’ll write a note of introduction to my grand kid and tape it on the crusted-shut lid. I’ll do the same to the brick of solar-melted bee’s wax lying dusty and unused in the gear shed. A veritable egg-hunt of great-grandpa’s bee-tropia.
Bees are having a rough time of late. They need an “International Year of the Honey Bee”. They need the global recognition of their importance and their vulnerability.
And yes, they need my Pops.
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Reviewed by alberto guinn
6/17/2020
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I thoroughly enjoyed your story told in such a humorous way about Pops and his bees. I recall that my cousin once raised bees when he was in high school and a friend from Pakistan who, while gaining his doctorate in West Virginia, got into gardening, fishing and raising bees, reminiscent of his family's huge landholdings in India before the separation. Anyway, he shared with me some very dark sumac honey, so very different from the light sweet clover honey from where I grew up in central Wisconsin.
Thank you for a new word, supersedure. We should use it on a few long in the tooth senators with addled brains, drooling at the mouth.
A wicked Cajun Fairy named Robes Pierre entered the impenetrable Magical doll land of Sha Bebe. Queen Faustina, the ruler of the doll land, thought she had destroyed him, but he's back! Will the doll land survive his evil ways?
I checked my calendar one morning to prick my gray cells for appointments and to be nagged by electronic reminders only to discover it is “National Honey Bee Day”. Memories of my Pops ran my trains of thoughts right off their tracks. So I take a break from noveling to rejoice in semi-sweet visions and mayhaps to scratch a few lines of a son’s recall of his father.
