Into the Hive at Night
Nighttime is not a good time to check the hive.
One warm April night, I lay awake obsessing about the state of my new queen. She’d arrived the previous day in a screened cage about the size of a large pack of gum. Accompanied by a couple of her daughters, she was separated from the rest of the hive by a candy plug that they would nibble away to free her. In this way she would gradually join the hive.
Had I installed her little cage correctly? Were the other bees able to smell her pheromone? Was she getting enough ventilation? Then I made a bad decision, not the first and not the last in my life as a new backyard beekeeper. I decided to go check. It was midnight. They’d all be asleep, I thought. What could possibly go wrong?
Nighttime, as it turns out, is not a good time to check the hive. Afternoon is best, I soon understood, because many bees are out foraging. At night, they are all home. So when I opened the hive and peered in, wearing only my pajamas and a bright white headlight, they received me like a honey-seeking bear, only lacking the thick, protective fur.
The next day, with my face still swollen from stings, I found many helpful Google returns about “avoiding nighttime hive inspections” and “how bees react to bright white light.”
I made many epic mistakes as a new beekeeper.
Most, thankfully, were not harmful to the bees, to me or my neighbors (though some of the neighborhood kids learned to duck for cover when they saw me in the yard with my bee suit on.)
The most useful lesson I learned in those early days was to think through any new task before jumping in. I’d jot down a list of tools I needed to avoid running back and forth between the garage and the hive. I’d outline the steps I needed to take and even walk through them. I’d make sure the main goal was clear. (“Refill feeder” or “remove feeder,” for example.) Eventually, I’d learn to anticipate unexpected scenarios (i.e. “Check to make sure feeder does not leak BEFORE installation.”)
In this way, beekeeping is unlike writing.
In writing, we can forge ahead, screw things up and create big problems. We can make a deplorable mess of things, but it doesn’t matter, because we can just start over.
I’m thinking of this right now with a new story I’m working on. I’ve just tossed out several chapters of plot that were working just fine structurally, but were, well, boring as hell. What made those chapters boring was that they were also safe. The line I was developing allowed me to pile on page after page of “then this happened” without asking “what’s really at stake here?”
But in this way, writing is like beekeeping.
We have to be willing to face the unknown, the unGoogleable questions, the risks of the hive at night. We have to be ready for the consequences, which will probably not put anyone in peril, but were are essential to create stories that readers will care about—the tiny tragedies and victories of our characters.
As for my new queen, she did just fine. After a few days, her attendants and the other workers ate through the candy plug in the bottom of her cage. By then they had grown accustomed to each other and recognized her as their new leader. That hive grew and thrived and delivered several seasons of wonderful honey. I hold out the same hopes for my new story—that it will grow with the labors of the seasons.