Bees and People

I keep bees; three hives. Elizabeth asked me if I could describe them.

The oldest hive is laid back; it's the only one that had only two filled supers, but had filled some of the hive body. I left it one super. The next hive, I had assembled from bees and a replacement queen I bought from Sam's Anarchy Apiaries. Sam eschews bee-veils and gloves. He's handled hives barefoot and sleeveless. This hive is not anarchic; it works hard, but it's very gentle. With it, I could probably get by without gloves (never without a veil). It produced three supers. I harvested the two least full. The last hive was a volunteer, a gift. It swarmed into one of my spare hive bodies and it stayed. It is the most productive; it over-filled three supers and had honey down below. I took only two supers. It's always fierce, ready to defend its hive. Its bees have stung me several times.

So, here we have three collectives, each comprising at least 100,000 members, replaced by a new generation of workers every six weeks in summer, and yet each has a collective identity I can readily recognize. Other beekeepers have confirmed this: hives have personalities.

So, do cities. So, do nations. Over time, the personality of a hive may change. The laid back one has become more productive, but it's a survivor of lean years when I had to feed it. France has been fractious since at least the French Revolution, but despite its latest round of strikes, it's calming down.

The USA was big, brash, and wasteful. It's still brash, and it's hard to change its spendthrift ways, despite straitened circumstances. Americans have had a tendency to blame late arrivals for their troubles. Now, that the US is no longer so exceptional, now that nations like China and India are growing rapidly and it is not, blaming the victims flames higher. It could become a nasty wildfire, burning out of control all over the world.

The victims are immigrants, deviants from "normal," like gay men and women, and Middle Easterners, victimized by US imperial meddling.

While Obama and "moderates" think they are trying to restore order to a chaotic world, right-wing hawks want to wade into countries like Iran, or Venezuela: our primacy is threatened; those nations' governments are unfriendly.

The impulse is not pacification, not order, but assertion: "who's boss," like Paladino, defeated for NY Governor; he was going "to Albany with a baseball bat."

Palin represents that spirit, albeit with a smile and a wink: similar resentment drove Fascism and Nazism. Can she carve the American hive into a stinging, vindictive force? The American Empire on a last rampage?

I hope not.