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| Beekeeping, Painting | |
Don’t you love driving at night? I do. It’s an eerie pleasure. Here in Boulder a night drive brings one into contact with the dark presence of the foothills to the west. The blur of deer near the road. Animal eyes. The smells of wet grass, a skunk, some smoke. Last night Andy and I moved two honeybee colonies from a rural area north of Boulder to a small farm closer to town. This is a task we can only at night after the field bees return home from foraging. The first hive we picked up was on a grassy hill bordered by cottonwoods near an irrigation ditch. It was buggy there so we worked quickly to strap down the colony and lift it into the truck. Dogs barked. A pair of coyotes howled in reply. One sounded like a woman screaming. The second colony (about a half a mile down the road) was jam-packed and bubbling over with bees. I taped a perforated board in front of the entrance like we usually do when we’re moving bees but was unable to nudge them all inside so we ended up carrying the box to the truck with a bee beard clinging to its front. It took 20 minutes to get to the new location and unload the truck. I pulled the board off the entrance to the #2 hive. Hundreds of bees poured out and crawled en masse up the front of the hive. Beautiful to see by moonlight. I love the heightened sense of mystery that comes from being outside at night. The sense that there’s a rich and fascinating world that exists just beyond my perception (the world of grass, the world of coyotes, the nightime world of the honeybees). This is why I paint. To invoke and explore these mysteries. What’s the nighttime world like where you live? | |
