Even little Bees dream big dreams and here at Hyde Park in Saint Joseph the grandest of aspirations is playing out above the heads of local park enthusiasts as a humble family of honeybees try to stake their claim in the new world.
Pablo came to this strange and wondrous place with a noble goal, to raise a hive that would dwarf the ones in his homeland and give his wife Juanita a lifestyle she could grow accustomed to.
“I come here, and I see things not as they are, but as they may become.” A small breeze sends his antennae into a sort of slow motion dance as he balances himself with a deft maneuver of the wings. “In my country, a man, he sees the hive that is his home but he knows that can never be the hive he will raise his family in.”
Overcrowding is but one of the many perils that Pablo fled from upon a warm spring breeze. It was April, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow hung heavy in the air like a pollinated perfume that the hard working father of four thousand could no longer ignore. His voice begins to crack as he shares the details of his escape, in his land a worker who abandons the hive faces much worse than the slings and arrows of outrageous hornets.
“They don’t just tell us, they show us.” His eyes grow heavy with dew that trickles down his fuzzy cheek as he recounts the fate that befell his own father. “They found him in the night, pocketing pollen that was meant to sustain us when we broke for the border at dawn. They brought him before the entire colony, ripped his stinger from his chest and made us, his family; watch him bleed out on the hive floor.”
The stakes were clearly known that early morning that Pablo and Juanita gathered up their dreams and dashed through a break in the border patrol. Wings buzzing a frantic jungle beat, the two star crossed lovers were three meadows away before the reality of what they had done began to sink in.
“For Pablo this was an easy thing, his family was gone, and he had no real standing within the colony.” Juanita is a striking beauty, even at this age, and the miles placed on her body from birthing an entire colony show only in the worry lines that criss-cross her face in a patchwork dance of the damned. “But me, I had a father still, a mother still, and many sisters and brothers. But Pablo, he was right, our land was no place to begin a new colony."
These days Juanita barely even bothers rubbing a marigold across her chest before heading out, she instead does her best to tally how many of the brood will be following her as she begins the morning duties.
“In our country I would have many workers to help with the harvest, but here we are still building our colony, so instead the children and I handle morning duties while Pablo and some of the boys stand vigilant at our borders.”
Recent wasp incursions have left things on high alert, and while homeland security is more of an issue here than in their homeland there are other hazards that Pablo is glad to have left behind.
“You look up into the sky here and you see so very few obstructions, and most of those are green. I smell strange smells on the air but they hold none of the metallic taste we grew to loathe. My ears, they hear true without the towers that came to our land.”
You can see him glance about at this point, as if he still fears that one day the towers will come to this land as well, bringing with them the damning shrieks that led so many of his co-worker astray. Cell phones, a boon to the humans who so readily consume his day’s labors, bee scientists believe they sing the siren song of death to the hard working honey makers of the land.
“You would hear them, first in the distance but then suddenly all throughout your body. I saw many of my brothers, their wings would drop, their heads would sway, then you watch them drift aimlessly off, those that came back to the hive would bring the sickness, the guards would block their entrance and then pile their bodies high at the base of our tree.”
Here though the air sings clean, and a day’s work stays within the family. Despite the hardships Pablo and Juanita both know this was for the best.
“We may work hard, but here we are free, and there are many trees.” Juanita’s chest begins to swell with pride as she oversees her children completing the morning labors. “Here I know that there are places for our children, and one day they will birth their own colonies, and find their own trees to call home. Perhaps then the many colonies may become.”
In the grand dreams of a mother the future is bright, and full of promise. While not sharing wholeheartedly in his wife’s optimism Pablo can feel the warmth of a light at the end of the tunnel as well.
“Here it is hard, but it is an honest hard. Back home the hard felt empty, as we knew our work only benefited others, here my family can grow strong and I can know as only a man knows that what I have done is right.”
As a single drop of nectar trickles past the borders of their oaken home he offers up a small taste of their labors as an invisible light known only as pride beams forth.
“For where else can sacrifice taste so sweet?”
