10/07/2021
๐ Bees are the ultimate cohousing community. ๐
Repost, source unknown.
My dad has bees. Today I went to his house and he showed me all the honey he had gotten from the hives. He took the lid off a five-gallon bucket full of honey and on the top there were three little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them, and he said he was sure they wouldn't survive.
I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quicklyโafter all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. But because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey ๐ฏ collection, there were bees flying all over outside. So he put the three in an empty plastic yogurt container and left it on the porch railing.
My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all of their sisters (all of the bees are females), who were cleaning the sticky, nearly dead bees, getting all the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters. When it was time for me to leave, we checked one last time, and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly awayโthe container was empty.
Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.
This is why cohousing. โค๏ธ