The name Melissa comes from the Greek word (μέλισσα), which means honey bee. I've known this since I was a child, getting trinket gifts for years referencing the origin of my name for holidays and birthdays. I was 36 by the time that I actually connected with my namesake and it wasn't by way of a hallmark inspired card or a candle with a cartoon bee. It was with a simple pale yellow beehive with a copper roof and 30,000 honeybees that landed in my garden oasis.
Last April a friend that knows my passion for gardening asked "Any chance you would be into having a beehive on your property this year? Their pollination should increase your harvest by 20%." "Hell yeah! Just tell me when they are coming." For the month that followed I borrowed a bee suit from a friend, read two beekeeping books cover to cover and purchased a half dozen perennials that my local nursery assured me were the honeybees' favorites.
In mid May a black pickup backed into my driveway with the beehive strapped down in the bed. Two men in white suits carried my queen and 30,000 of her babies to their new home on the south side of my potting shed. My friend Matt was an amazing teacher, spending hours showing me all the intricacies that go into maintaining a healthy hive. The large majority of the bees are female and they do all of the work within the hive. The remaining slightly larger bees are males, called drones. They have a real attitude sometimes and my theory is that they have no real function in the hive itself so they have to exert their dominance on humans. The only times I was chased out of my own garden by bees were by drones. Their only purpose is to mate with the queen once a year and then they promptly die after mating. Hell of an existence right?
The females that actually do the work have five jobs that they perform throughout the spring, summer and early fall. Their first job is to clean cells, then as a nurse she tends to the larvae, the scout is alert for danger that may be coming, the undertaker removes the dead (and deadbeat drones before winter) and the forager gets the pollen. They rotate through these jobs and progress as they get more mature. The scouts take their job very seriously. Throughout the summer, I would lay on the ground near the hive entrance and watch the foragers return with bright orange legs covered in pollen. If I got an inch closer than the scouts were comfortable with they would fly out and poke me in the forehead. They knew me so there was no danger of being stung, just a 'step it back mom, you're getting too close.'
I watched my bees daily and studied the hive with Matt. They doubled in size in the first month and 60,000 beauties were working hard, building up the hive and pollinating the land. They were amazing to watch and brought such a calm presence to the garden. I would often find my dog sleeping next to the hive, he could feel it too. Once I understood all of the complex work they were doing inside the hive and how much energy it took for the foragers to pollinate the plants, my own existence seemed simpler. It literally takes one honeybee at least 20 visits to a single flower in order to fertilize one cucumber properly. Knowledge like this made me honor the food I was growing even more than years prior.
Early in the fall I discovered that my hive had not made enough honey for the bees to survive through the winter. The honey they make throughout the spring, summer and fall becomes their only source of food during the winter months. I read everything I could about how to save it, but the only viable option for their survival was to combine my hive with another. When you combine hives, you then have two queens and only one can survive. A fight to the death obviously causes stress on the colony and those who lose their queen will either die along with her or submit to their new leader.
Throughout the winter, the bees form a ball in the middle of the hive with the queen at the center. They rotate from the outside, which feels the frigid Vermont temperatures, to the inside that warms them at nearly 90 degrees. They keep this rotation up all winter in hopes of lasting through the brutal cold. Last weekend, after a very harsh winter my hive was opened and they didn't make it. All the love and attention I gave to my honeybees and they didn't survive the winter. The whole system is so fragile and when just one element goes wrong, the entire colony can collapse.
This spring when you see a honeybee pollinating a flower think of her and her struggle. How she may have started as a nurse to the young in the hive, worked her way up to pollinator and may eventually be the queen's attendant. Think of the winter she may have endured rotating through cold and warmth with 50,000 of her siblings. She is dedicated to her craft and works hard during her very short lifespan. Without our honeybees we would lose 60 unique agricultural crops that need pollinators to survive. Respect and honor the honeybee; we need her in order to keep our food system alive.
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers." ~ Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine