Image CC-BY-NC by Kevin Steele
Every April they load up a semi with packages of Crush and send it north to Minnesota. When it arrives, all the hobbyists take the day off and stage an informal party– a long line of pickup trucks and station wagons (and one ice-cream truck) stretching back from the semi, everybody waiting excitedly and sharing snacks. I bought two packages, reasoning that for a beginner one would be too risky and three too much work.
I hived them as soon as I got home. It’s pretty simple. First you stuff some grass into the entrance of each hive to slow the escape of any panicked Crush until they’ve had a while to adjust to the smell of their new homes. Then you find the queen and put her someplace safe. Then you take the covers off the hive, pull out a few frames from the center, and shake all the workers out of the package down into the gap you just made. Then, very gently, you set the queen in and give her a few seconds to adjust. Then you replace the frames you took out (taking care not to damage the queen!), put a scrap of aluminum on top of the frames (basically just a canapé), replace the inner cover, put a feeder full of sugar water (an aperitif) on top of the inner cover, then the outer cover over the feeder and you’re done. The Crush will dig through the grass in a few hours and begin to forage on their own.
I came back the next morning to check on them and make sure they hadn’t swarmed off somewhere. Both colonies were intact and seemed vigorous. Hive One already showed signs of a condenser. Good news! They must have found a source of aluminum nearby. It was too much to hope that there would be eggs so soon, and sure enough: I didn’t see any. Hive Two appeared healthy and busy but no signs of refrigeration yet. Not a concern; early days.
Jones came by looking for his canoe. I hadn’t seen it.
A few days later (I shouldn’t be disturbing them this much but I can’t resist) I took another look. Hive One’s cooling system appeared to be finished and working well. The condenser fins were shiny—almost raw-looking. When I popped off the inner cover a tiny puff of condensation appeared and it was downright chilly inside. A squadron of empty workers was crinkling mightily to compress coolant and move it around the system. I never know whether to be horrified or humbled by the compressors. It looks like such an extreme-form of self-sacrifice. I try to remind myself to set aside anthropomorphism and view it as an inhuman but magnificent system. Hive Two’s condenser looked complete but I could see that the evaporator still needed work. I checked my textbook and decided Hive Two’s slow progress was still within the broad range of “normal” and decided not to worry.
Each hive contained one frame of tiny white eggs. Such fecundity! As I understand it, the queen is the only one who lays. (Any worker has the potential to lay if the hive becomes queenless, but workers can’t mate so they can only lay males (which are always fatherless.)) Young workers follow the queen around, feeding and tending her, and enforcing hive hygiene. Older workers were flying in and out of the entrances bringing back sugar, water and aluminum and passing on foraging tips to the others.
Three days later the eggs had hatched into fat curls of acid-green larvae and the queens had laid new eggs around the margins of the first brood frames and in new frames.
Jones came by again. Some asshole had stolen the rocker cover out of his beloved Porsche. Who would steal a rocker cover?
At the next check the brood frames contained eggs, larvae and sealed pupae. The pupae are the same color as the comb, with no trace of larval green remaining. I’ve always wondered where the green goes.
Pupae stay sealed for around two weeks, so I amused myself in the meantime by planting a Crush-friendly garden. I planted Goobers, Sno-Caps, Necco Wafers, Bazooka Joe, Cry Babies, Abba-Zabba, Cosmix, Wurmz ‘n Dirt, Natural Nuggets and Pop-Mics. None of this was necessary since Crush forage in a two-mile radius, but it made me happy to think I was doing something nice for them.
Jones came to my front door with a shotgun and little flecks of spittle on his lips. I kept the door shut, so I’m not sure why he was carrying the gun or what he was shouting about. I hope he gets some help.
I was out admiring my healthy colonies and enjoying the frosty smell of newly-hatched bright-orange adults when Jones and his gun kicked in my fence and stumbled into my yard. The Crush sensed a threat and came billowing out in an angry cloud. Jones could probably have saved himself by firing into the cloud, but he leveled his gun and fired one barrel into Hive One and the other into Hive Two. Then they were on him. He managed to run a few yards back onto his own property but then the sheer volume of venom from that many stings took him down and he fell, bloated and glowing.
I had my phone halfway out of my pocket to call an ambulance when I noticed the stillness. The compressors had stopped. Thin carbonated streams trickled from the perforated hives. Green bits of larvae lay scattered on the grass. I looked at Jones and his goddamn gun. Then I walked over to his writhing body and kicked him in the gills.
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