The large plywood dog house sat in the far corner southwest corner of the property. Since the beat-up structure was upside-down, I assumed the last tenant must have left the premises in a snarling huff. To gain easy access, or maybe the faded-blue paint tasted good, raccoons or any one of a dozen other varmints had chewed jagged holes through the plywood siding. The look was rustic, yet went with the farm’s other countryfied décor. And even though the Mrs. had formed a vastly different opinion of the old dog house’s quaintness, it was never removed. Not until this year, that is.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t keep the lawn manicured around the sore-eyed sculpture. Last summer, I noticed a hive of honey bees had taken up residence in what now was considered a beehouse. I always mowed up close-in to watch the little buggers happily buzz in and out of the holes. Then, with a tip of my cap, I swiveled the zero-turn Kubota Zd-1211 180 degrees and didn’t even look back. Not once did an angry bee attack, much less a stinging swarm. My bees were friendly bees.
Of course, there was the issue of pollination. Without honey bees, instead of ripe tomatoes, broccoli, green beans or herbs, my garden would be made up of sterile withered vines. To quote a noted Missouri Ozark philosopher, “If’n it ain’t broke don’t try’n fix it.”
This spring, I turned the job of manicuring Caracara Farm over to Esteban, a stout man with strong arms and legs that sometimes appear to be animated brown tree branches. Dark intense eyes evenly spaced above his thick black mustache indicate that Esteban doesn’t need no stinkin’ badge.
A few weeks ago, Esteban was stretched-out on the Zd-1211’s bucket-seat that he agreed conformed perfectly with his rear-end. Black wrap-around Ray-Ban’s and a wide-brimmed sombrero shading his face, partially hid his smile as the lawnmower-man gave me a thumbs up. He roared off leaving a gray cloud of diesel smoke. At the time I didn’t think to warn him about the honey bees shacking-up in the dog house. They’d never laid a stinger in my lily-white skin, so why would they bother with Esteban? Because they preferred chocolate over vanilla? That was just plain dumb. I was pretty sure the bee brain was programmed at birth to exhibit mindless robotic behavior, so why worry? An hour later when I went to check on how the mowing was progressing, I was surprised to find the Zd-1211 still running but the driver was nowhere to be found.
The next morning, I learned that my peace-loving honey bees had broken the unwritten sacred treaty. A kamikaze bee blitzkrieg had attacked Esteban. Now, his normally brown face was red, swollen and looked painful, as if he’d been punched by the two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. What was Esteban’s response to how he was feeling?
“Not to worry. I’m used to the stingers.”
It was Springtime. My tomatoes, peppers, squash and strawberries were putting on blooms that needed pollinating. Against my better judgement, I decided to give the critters a chance to redeem themselves and put off calling a hit-man to whack the queen bee.
Two weeks later, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Esteban was back on the Zd-1211. This time though, he was careful to stay a good 20 yards away from the old dog house. When I went to check on him, I found the Kubota without a driver, again. The motor was still running but this time its forward motion had been halted by a dead olive tree. There are over 500 dead olive trees, but that’s another blog for another time.
After checking in with Esteban, I learned that he’d taken another roundhouse punch from the bee squad. Even though the guy assured me he was ok, this time, I called Keith’s Bees. The queen’s executioner went by the name Orion. After he cleaned out the old dog house, Orion pointed to a bulging black plastic garbage bag resting in the bed of his pickup truck.
“That was a one big hive. It damned-near filled a 45-gallon bag.”
“Any honey?” I asked.
With a cackle he shook his wooly head. “Nope. What you got is about 150 thousand hungry Africanized bees.”
“You mean killer bees?”
“Not exactly. Sometime during the last few months, the original hive’s docile queen was assassinated. She was replaced with a bee version of Catherine de Medici. The Africanized queen mutated the honey bees into a more aggressive species.”
The very idea that my peaceful honey bees could transform into an army of pissed-off monsters gave me pause. Just what other unsupervised, unregulated alterations were occurring in the insect world? Changes in the genetic structure happen at such a rapid pace that we don’t realize until it’s too late what has punched us in the face. Poor Esteban. He became a victim of Evil-lution.