Our Best Crop (story & photos by Todd Hardie of Honey Gardens - Vermont, U.S.A.)
     There are defining moments in life that you always remember, a passage in a relationship that is a poignant reminder of a special time.
     This month our daughter Meriwether became comfortable with the bees and is now a beekeeper.
     In what could be the hardest week of the year, we needed help in the field. The strong colonies have to be split to make new hives. If they are not, they will swarm and not make any honey. The increase makes up for the winter losses and brings new mite-resistant queens into the operation that are essential to organic beekeeping. Small hives, called nucs, are made to receive the queens, all with the orchestration that requires the precision of placement within hours of arriving. With the ongoing weeks of a rainy season, we had to bring carts of equipment through many a long field, where the trucks could not go. The bears never let us forget that they are around. We clean up around them as electric fences are rebuilt for the new season. It was exhausting. She was a trooper, never a single complaint.
     Last year I realized Meriwether was on her way when she took off honey with Sam for the day and remarked later that the stings she had received were good for her. Eighteen years of hearing the mantra around Dad had been successful. I was happy that most stings were on a place where a sledding accident/ice hockey had been stressful to her knees. The bees go to where they are needed. The healing in bee venom therapy continues after thousands of years.
     Honey bees are gentle. They get a bad rap because of their aggressive cousins, wasps and hornets. Learning to become comfortable with them at this time is more important than the details of management. By the end of the week, Meriwether was taking colonies with 40,000 bees apart, looking for queens and queen cells, moving colonies around to new positions in the bee yards, and identifying the strength and condition of each bee hive.
     Free will is so important. This is a time when she wanted to help. There will always be honey around for family. Now she was ready to learn how to take care of her own bees, make her own honey, share the skills and pass them on to her own family, pollinate the neighborhood.
     Meriwether has become a gentle warrior for the Earth, now sent to China for two weeks to meet with other 19 year olds from around the world to prepare to be a leader for the near future, talking about the environment, peace, agriculture, poverty. Our hope is with this generation. May they do better than we have. | More about the title of this story.