Beeswax At ten thirty this morning, there were six bees in my yard. The first one buzzed past me and began foraging for pollen on the grape hyacinths and within half an hour, there were six of them crawling over every inch of the hyacinths. I took note of the bees with special interest since last year I saw no honey bees or bumble bees. Not one. Several of my gardener friends, puzzled, asked if I had seen any bees and by the middle of summer I had abandoned the lifelong habit of walking cautiously through the grass to avoid stepping on a bee. Mud-dobbers built a mud nest under the eaves twice and each time I knocked it down. Wasps nested in the ‘roof’ of the closed table umbrella, swarming angrily when I opened it. Two of those huge bees that seem to hum and hover motionless in the air for hours as if trying to decide whether to drill holes in your siding or your fencing, finally chose the fence. I filled the holes with sheetrock mud and never saw them again. According to various news sources, honey bees first began disappearing in the fall of 2006 and by the summer of 2007 were disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate across twenty-four states, leaving the beekeeping industry in peril and threatening the production of numerous crops. In a mystery described as worthy of Agatha Christie, bees apparently left their hives in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returned to their colonies. Researchers assumed the bees died in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold. Other theories included pesticides, virus, and disorientation due to cell phone signals. They even gave it a name - colony collapse disorder (CCD). But nobody knew for sure what happened to the bees. So, on this beautiful spring morning I was happy to see six bees crawling all over the hyacinths in my yard. I’ve wondered all day if they made it home. Copyright 2008 Patricia Paris patriciaparis@gmail.com Member: Tennessee Writers Alliance, Int’l Women’s Writing Guild, Tennessee Mountain Writers, Chattanooga Writers Guild | 
