Colony Collapse

Colony Collapse Jeffrey Utzinger (bio) The honeybee population had swelled to an amorphous cluster, not quite a sphere, but large and dense enough to indicate a healthy, burgeoning observation hive. A steady hum filled the air as strands of bees emanated from the central mass like buzzing electrical currents flaring out the passageway to forage, returning with pollen and nectar, completing the circuit by pulling, filling, and capping cells. As summer came to a simmering close, however, the ball of bees began to shrink. Weeks passed with no sign of the queen laying eggs, making cell inspections; it was as though she had issued a decree that the hive must be right-sized. The impressive honey walls her workers had constructed since spring would not last forever. Winter would return to reduce daylight hours, chill the air, and sweep away blossoms. The season had come, apparently, for conserving energy. Then, in the days before Christmas, the bee masses atrophied a shocking amount, dwindling to a fistful, then a smattering, until you could tally the remaining bees individually. A daily countdown commenced: ten, nine, eight, seven. The colony collapsed to zero on New Year's Eve. I had dropped the ball, ignored the signs, seen it coming but did nothing except hope for the best. "How are your bees?" my son would ask throughout the autumn, peering into the screened vents atop the hive. "Fine, I think," I would say. "There seem to be less," my daughter would say, sitting cross-legged in the folding chair next to the hive. "Well, the hive was getting crowded," I'd say. Two of my children still live at home; they are teenagers, lithe, beautiful, in near constant movement. When they occasionally flit into my space, I try not to startle them with sudden movements. Try to engage them in deeper conversation before they flutter away. Just as I turn from my work to engage in bee speculation, they wave their smart phones over the hive, snapping a still life or reel—capture, caption, and post—before shifting the lens my way for a candid of their keeper. Documenting every moment of their lives in captivity. "I think something is eating them away," my wife, Christa, said one day. She was wedged in the corner, studying the hive. I stared over her shoulder at dingy-white, cottony strands streaking across several capped cells. "I hope they don't all leave," I said. [End Page 120] "That would be sad," she said. "That would," I agreed. Sugar water, since no bees were feeding, had seeped into the cracks where the feeder joins the hive, and pooled onto the table's surface to the cat's delight who was crouched, lapping up the sweetness. I had avoided the area since the collapse, half-hoping for a post-Christmas miracle, imaging the bees had rebounded, returned, and were rebuilding. Sometimes leaving bees alone is the best way to care for them. However, when I shooed the cat away to peer through the Plexiglas, my misguided hopes were dashed: the hive floor was littered with insect corpses. January is always so depressing. I slipped the hive entrance's plastic tunnel from the window stopper as though removing a feeding tube from an expired patient. Un-buckled the clasps that secure the hive to the table and tipped it slightly to test the weight. Even though bees had been building out comb and collecting honey for six months, the hive—roughly the size of a breaker box—felt nearly as light as the day it was brand new. More gooey syrup oozed out as I lifted the hive and carried it outside, rested the wounded mess on the wrought-iron table that serves as an outdoor workbench. A sticky path trailed behind me. "I'm doing the autopsy if anyone wants to watch," I announced, ducking back into the house for a few tools. "Give me a minute," Christa hollered from the kitchen. Our oldest daughter, home for winter break, was burrowed in her bedroom, reading or writing, and her sister, still asleep or painting—dreamscapes all—did not respond. Our son, sixteen, was gone for the day. Morning...