Suzanne Askham

This is why I let the wild bees go

The honey bees buzzed into the garden like a striped, determined blizzard, and settled in a wild cherry tree where they became a solid mass that moved constantly yet kept its shape. The way they seethed and settled seemed alarming to this bee-ignorant person. I called a local beekeeper, who said he would turn up the next morning and capture the swarm. In the meantime, cautiously, I studied them. And began to see patterns in their movement.

Firstly,  they were reassuringly peaceful, cocooning and protecting their all-important queen. Then there were individual bees, scouts, who constantly buzzed off to search for a new nesting site in the nearby woods, and returned to communicate their findings to the swarm.

For hours, on and off, I watched them. They were mesmerising. Gradually I began to see the swarm’s point of view. I liked the way so many bees could act as one community. As chance would have it, my own home was about to become a community. Within the week, our disabled son, Tim, would return from college to live a semi-independent life with us. He would bring a team of carers with him. I was looking forward to Tim’s return very much. However, I felt trepidation about the team that would nearly always be with him.

While I watched and waited, the bees quietly buzzed their message, that it’s okay to be part of a community, in which everyone has their role to play. During those hours, my attitude shifted. I began to accept my family’s new phase. Our home shimmered and changed shape around me, becoming its new, more public self.

The next day, I phoned the beekeeper and asked him to come a couple of hours later than planned. I had to go out but also, secretly, I hoped our visiting bees might have the chance to live a wild, free life. And sure enough, in that time the bees lifted and vanished into the woodland. They were gone within seconds. I understood that they had found their own home. And I wasn’t sorry that I let them go.