lightning box

The morning air was still sharp. It was nearly seven o’clock and the sun was wrestling with the hills far off to the east, bent on gaining his liberty once again. Several crows sat in the high branches of a live oak across the creek watching intently as a little black Karmann Ghia crawled slowly down the dirt road between melons and corn. Suddenly a theatrical argument broke out among the heavy blue-black birds. The air cascaded with caws, each thrust at the troupe by its speaker and trailing off into the cacophonous backwash of the others. Then, as abruptly as it began, the debate was over and the throaty little Volkswagen motor was the only punctuation to the still, clear morning.

Beyond the creek, a hundred acres of cherries dusted the rising foot of the southern hills with the pale petals that had only last week advertised the spring harvest to ten million charged particles of airborne gold. The bees had done a fine job harvesting their cherry crop and thus ensured that the orchardist would find his crop full bodied and sweet later in the summer. Now the little field hands were off to some new source up in the hills. Ceanothus perhaps, or one of the early blooming eucalyptus or native oaks. This little valley was an extraordinary location for bees. Eleven months each year the weather was right for flying, and nectar flowed freely from agricultural, residential, and native crops so abundant that the bees rarely were at a loss for work.

Finally the Ghia reached the end of the dusty little trail. The engine stopped at the edge of the apiary and its silence was punctuated by the click-tooth grind of the parking brake mechanism.

The soft glow of the dawn's half sun filled the car and washed the driver through the open window. He sat quietly for a few minutes listening to the place. The creek, subterranean through most of the summer months except for a few of the deeper holes, was still running, but just a whisper, much slower than during the January rains. It had surged over the spillway of the reservoir upstream just after the new year, and had rushed in a frenzy of boiling mud and unrelenting runoff down through the valley for three weeks before it finally spent itself and settled to a more stately flow nurtured by hundreds of hillside springs oozing with the full gush of the highest water table since before the long drought that had ended three years ago. But now the flow was beginning to settle, and the creek was no longer a river.

The soft murmur of the creek was studded with pinpoints of song from goldfinches, and twitterings of bushtits, and chatterings of common sparrows, and now and then, a skeptical remark from one or another of the crows. Just once, a coyote barked from across the orchard and then slipped up into the hill country where his shyness would serve him better through the bright hours of the day.

The sun suddenly won his struggle with the hills and jumped the first few inches of his skyward climb as if the pent up energy from his striving was suddenly released. Now that his appointment with the sky was once again assured, he floated softly, rising steadily but now with such slow fierce dignity that his movement was almost perceptible. And as he gathered his fire and might, his first warmth brushed gently against the valley.

All the entrances faced the rising sun, and so the little girls who had waited inside their boxes so patiently all night came to peek out and greet their sun as he first painted the landing boards with warmth. At first, there were only a few at each entrance, peeking out with curiosity at the new day. Then there were dozens walking around on the landing boards, stopping occasionally to talk antennae talk. Soon there were tentative short circling hops into the still crisp air as if to verify that flight was still possible. And suddenly the fielders were off to the hills. Their departures were emphatic and decisive. Each had committed to her chosen forage days earlier, and knew exactly where to go. No energy was wasted as she took off from the landing board as if slung from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

Within minutes some of these field bees were back with their first load of the day. Their approach was remarkably unlike their departure. Now loaded with nectar or pollen, they flew much more slowly but with more momentum. Crash landings were a serious possibility as they came in back-pedaling hard to slow down with their heavy load before they hit the deck.

The driver did not open hives today. He had worked the colonies a few days ago and all were queenright and bustling. Each had sufficient room to store the pale produce of their labor, and to expand their nurseries for the spring buildup. One showed early signs of impulse to swarm, and he had taken precautions to relieve the temptation. There was no work for him to do in the rustic white boxes, their little golden bundles of lightning were positively charged, and for him to open a box now would only be meddling.

He had come not to work but to commune—to drink in the peaceful assurance that came from association with this most orderly, unchanging simplicity. The bees were exactly as they had been for many thousands of years. Their simple insect brains were deeply ingrained with patterns that lent themselves readily to anthropomorphic metaphor. Perhaps this was part of why he was so powerfully drawn to them.

The bees appear industrious. At the landing board and in the field, where most casual observers know them best, they work steadily and without pause. All they do appears unselfish and bent to the greater good of the hive. A field worker wears herself out in about three or four weeks and then goes off to die alone, not cluttering the hive with her carcass or bothering her sisters with the need to dispose of her. Inside, the nest is a constant bustle of activity day and night. Housekeeping, nursery duty, and foraging all go on in orderly fashion without any apparent need for leadership. The hive appears to embody the ideal of communism that so captivated and betrayed mankind throughout much of the twentieth century. The bees all seem to know their place in the order of the hive, and eagerly hold to their station without self-centered ambition or striving against the common good.

But all this wonderful idealism is lost on the bees. They are utterly oblivious to it. They are not unselfish communal idealists. They are simply bees. All they do is ingrained and imbedded in thousands of years of repetition. Hard-wired circuitry. Responses to pheromones and scents and visual cues and conditions and stimuli that have repeated and conspired since the dawn of time to make them what they are. They have no idealism, no ambition, no great schemes, no pretense. They live to be alive; to be honeybees; to gather nectar. As he sat against the fender of the Ghia he knew this. And perhaps it was this simple unassuming being without pretense or striving that attracted him to the bees more than all the noble anthropomorphic analogies. He was deeply moved and comforted by the bees and their world, and could never find words to express it well enough.