I do have to admit to some sadness about native bees. When I first moved to the isolated end of my home island nearly a decade ago, I noticed that I could find no honey bees here. Flowers didn't buzz with that familiar honey bee sound, but they did buzz with other sounds: huge loud, black bumblebees, for example, and quiet, small bees with colorful, clown-like, stripes.
Nowadays, with my hives and those of a community garden nearby, I notice honey bees near most of the flowers I pass. The other bees? Not so much.
UNSTOPPING A JAR ON A JANUARY EVENING
“Whose jar is this, I think I know . . .”
It's mine, actually. That ownership was somewhat up in the air for a while, because I had saved two jars from the autumn harvest, knowing from experience that before the spring harvests somebody would likely ask me for honey with some urgency. In retrospect, it seems strange that I didn't save any for myself, but I consume so much during harvesting that I can lose the taste for it for a while. So, for nearly three months, I've had two jars in my cupboard, packaged up pretty, waiting for the day.
Sure enough, my daughter asked me for a jar just before Christmas for her very deserving mother-in-law. No question about that being a good thing, and so it came to be that Jar #1 found its home.
New Year's came and went, and I began thinking about the jar in the cupboard. It occurred to me that maybe I had found a home for Jar #2. Why not me? Not that I needed honey, exactly. I just started thinking about why I often don't save any honey for myself. I was missing the smell and taste of it, both on its own terms, but also as a way of reliving the joy of warm weather and sticky harvesting, of warmth and the feeling of abundance that comes as pint after pint of honey emerges to fill another mason jar.
I removed the pretty packaging, unscrewed the top, put a spoon in and again tasted the autumn, the sunshine, the flowers, and the sugar rush. I replaced the lid and placed the jar back in exactly the same cupboard, but this time feeling one jar richer than before. As a bonus, I also felt relieved of the burden of deciding who should get the remaining jar. No more “promises to keep, nor miles to go before I sleep.”