Wasps at the Weak Hive

Wasps working a weak hive is a hard thing to watch and stay calm through, and you told me plainly that you wanted to kill every one of them with your bare hand, that the wanting took up more of you than you expected. I will not tell you the wanting is wrong. It only means you are paying attention to bees you care about, and that is no small thing in itself.

Look at what the anger does before you do anything with it. It arrives fast, certain of itself, wanting to be spent right now, a quick hand at the entrance, a boot for anything low and striped. Let it sit one breath longer than feels comfortable. Not to swallow it, which only stores it for later use, but to give it the same close watching you would give a hive doing something new, something you have not figured out yet. Where does it sit. How fast does it want to move your hand. The heat does not go anywhere while you look at it. It is still there after the breath. But you are looking past it now, at the actual hive, rather than only at the wasps.

Here is what the actual hive usually needs, and it is rarely the wasps' deaths. A strong hive polices its own door and a weak one does not, and the weakness was there before the first wasp ever found it, a thin population, a queen slowing, guards spread too far apart at the entrance to hold a line. Kill every wasp in the county with a hand full of hate and you will have spent a great deal and fixed nothing, because the door is still undefended and more will come by evening. Narrow the entrance instead, down to a width two bees can hold shoulder to shoulder, and you have done the actual work, which was never about the wasps at all.

Defend the hive the way you would close a door against weather, plainly, because the cold outside is real, not because you hate the cold. A narrowed entrance is a door. It is not a verdict on anything standing outside it.

— the Beekeeper

This is a teaching-letter. No one sent it, and it is addressed to whoever opens it.