I know enough, at least, as to approach the hive,
not from straight on but from the side, otherwise
a threat is seen, and potentially, an onslaught
of sentries sent out to save their queen.

In truth, I’m a beginner, with so many doubts
about the motives of my need to keep a colony
and play the master of the bees.

But when the little wooden box with screen sides arrived,
a mated queen and 10,000 living beings inside,
there was no time to contemplate philosophy.
My frames assembled, boxes primed and well dried,
I donned my suit, lit the smoke, and improvised.

Like clockwork I did fill
their water bowl with sugar syrup.
Once a week, I’d pry the sticky lid and then inside
a cloud of drones I’d stand enveloped.
I would, at first, swallow my fears,
that they would not see,
behind my veil of secrecy,
the terror in my eyes.

Through summer I remained
amazed at new comb
drawn out on wooden frames,
and quickly did I learn to add
the new frames soon, or else
the bees would weave a comb
on their own amorphous loom. 
In dreams I pondered
on the forms they might construe
if they were left
to sculpt with hexagons
as their hive mind would do.

Each week they seemed to multiply,
and once stung
I understood just why the gloves were necessary.
They stored such a vast supply.  My suit, no longer
white, turned splotchy yellow.  Those pine boxes grew
so honey-laden heavy, hard to carry.

I feared of the varroa mite, and kept close watch
but saw no sight of that tiny scourge.  I set traps
for the hive beetle, though my attempts were feeble,
it seemed I would catch one and ten emerge.

Then, when the beetles left, for reasons I know not yet,
I felt a great relief to spot the healthy queen
in her brood chamber in the lowest frame,
surrounded by a cast of workers keeping guard.
I tossed my veil and danced a jig about the yard.

Winter fast approached and so
I insulated underneath with bales of straw,
stuck a shim under the lid to ventilate,
put a stone on top for weight,
and waited for the spring to thaw.

Now to open winter’s mystery,
and unravel its cruel twists of plot,  frame on frame
of honey left,  but the bees are not.
There are two hundred, maybe,
lying on the bottom screen,
but no movement, no buzzing,
as far as I can see,
no queen.

I take a few, maybe ten,  into my palm
and as they spill with lifeless bodies I am given still
to hope I might have seen a tiny leg stretch out,
a sign of life within. But as with many things we love
and cannot understand, in their death,  all
that seems to give them life is the tremble in our hands.

I am left to wonder where and why this colony is gone.
Perhaps the pesticides of surrounding farms.
Perhaps too much moisture in the hive,
Perhaps it was the varroa mite.
Perhaps the queen and colony have swarmed
to a nearby hollow tree, alive.
In which case I would most hope the comb
they draw in that dark space
is a shape not yet imagined by my lower race.