Honeybees in the Park

Today my partner told me that a significant percentage of bees do not work within the colony. 20% of bees are responsible for a large portion of foraging for the hive. I always thought that if you were a honeybee, and you were designed to go out and forage for pollen for the hive to prosper and survive—you better be out there gathering resources to make that honey. 

 

20% of bees doing 50% of one kind of work for the hive. There is more to a honeybee than making honey. No bee is lazy, but there is a flexibility within roles, tasks, and a colony’s needs. Bees age and they have different physical abilities—strengths and weaknesses, different reasons to step up and become more active to help the colony survive. 

 

I am full of duty and the energy to execute a task. I am full of creativity, but I do not know how to sit down and rest. As I fight through muscle tension and the chronic minute pain that builds and builds and builds until I am irritable and short and withdrawn I have had to learn how to breathe—eight seconds in, eight seconds hold…here. 

 

This is the part of stillness, full expansion of self into the chaos of the world that we inhabit. We are animals with higher thinking, creatures with a myriad of designs and abilities and thoughts. My partner states that we are demigods! We shape the earth as we see fit. We build, we terraform, we kill and genetically manipulate. What are we but makers and changers of the reality we were given. 

 

Exhaling for eight seconds is the next step in my reality. This exhale is taking the expansion of myself and releasing its influence into the world. My breath is full of compassion, joy, and a stark determination to take in all that life has to offer. 

 

“Why can’t you have it all?” 

“You can’t have it all! No one can have it all!” I exclaimed. 

 

My roommate's question was planted in me over a year ago. It has been stirring in me recently. This year has been arduous and these past few weeks full of Fear:

- Possible Job loss

- The infinite responsibility of adulthood

- Lack of presence to Enjoy the reality of my life

- Death.

“Why can’t you have it all?” It rings in my head. 

“20% of bees do most of the foraging.”  I mull it over again and again. 

 

A unique trait to them, a choice that they make to support the hive, to foster community, to sacrifice even some of their safety for others to rest, to play, to be nursed.  

 

I am grateful and somewhat joyous of the experiences of these weeks. I could have continued to withdraw into myself, cry in my egg chair overlooking a concrete courtyard underneath a Georgian microstorm. I do need those moments. 

 

I also need the moments of sitting in the park underneath a light polluted sky. There were only four stars in my sight. 

 

There are stars beyond the stars. Rigel in Orion's belt is predicted to supernova any day (with respect to a star's elongated life).

 

This moment with friends was one of those big, burning moments in my life. It was an awful few weeks. A very sad day, full of grief, and confusion, and comfort from togetherness. 

 

“This is luxury. To be together in the park at night with snacks. To be together in Tragedy.” I muse aloud.

 

Under the street lights that scattered into the clearing in the park, the shadows danced, the fear of Atlanta slowly crept in—I felt like prey. 

 

The lights we use to keep the darkness at bay make us forget that light doesn’t make us safe at all and the darkness does not veil us. 

 

The lights we use to keep the darkness at bay

Make us forget all sorts of things don’t they?

I didn’t feel safe because there was Light,

Life is not safe. 

I just felt not 

Alone—

At the park, 

In my memories, 

In the world.