¬ The valley we inhabit is starting to smell of native plum blossoms. The smell reminds me of fresh ground pueblo white corn and honey, one of my very favorite aromas and one that helps mark the coming of spring. We live on the northern most section of the valley and it will be a couple more weeks untill our fence-lines of the farm will burst too with these blossoms. It’s always an anticipation of what’s to come driving the road north watching mother earth bloom as we gain in elevation.
I’ve been raising bees for the last few years now and I’m sure they are as eager for the blossoms to open as I am. Each year, as I get excited for this moment of fruition, I soon remember that winter will come and test us all again. Each hive that makes it through the harsh months, will ideally be stronger for it. I like to think it’s the same for us.
Though each year we lose a few hives, I like to think of it was an investment. That in my lifetime we can have hives that in their DNA can thrive in this terrain, and the honey we may be able to consume from them will help us do the same. In so many ways our bees are a lot like an accumulation of our ethos, a balance of freedom and restraint. Despite if we like it or not, the bees know better than we do on what they want, or need, and I try and respect that fully. Each spring as another hive or two disappear or die it’s hard to know which side of the scale is unbalanced. It seems though, that each year it is getting better. Each hive will swarm off and inhabit our terrain, if not collected, and will be the most resilient that they could be, eventually lending those genetics, and ideally, that resilience to the more domestic hives in the future.
Last year my mother past away at the age of 47. It always seemed to me that she was always on the edge existence on this planet, and that in her passing she would be closer to each of the children she raised so diligently. In a way her job had been accomplished. I felt this the day after her passing in a swarm of bees from our hive that swarmed off to the closest piñon tree in our yard. This could just have been nature doing it’s thing, and me seeing something in it, but it’s sweet to think she's around, if not, at least that the life that I now have is only possible because of her and that as beautiful things happen she in alive in again in my thoughts.
I was able to catch the swarm and it now resides at the farm as the “Julie hive”, despite a hard winter they survived and will soon be out getting the nectar of our fruit trees and wildflowers.