It’s mid-November and the bees are back. The wild Sonoran honeybees migrate with the hummingbirds. The bees’ return coincided with the return of my long-time friend, the male white-eared hummingbird. During the hot weather months, the bees and hummingbirds migrate to the mountains. At least a dozen varieties of hummingbirds may be seen at Ramsey Canyon in the mountains near Sierra Vista in the summer months. Now that the weather here has cooled off, they are back.
The wild bees also flock to my garden of flowerpots under the big mesquite tree next to my front porch. The bees are hungry and thirsty; they frantically swarm over the hummingbird feeders. Wherever there is shade and water a great many desert creatures come to find comfort so I’m careful to keep the ceramic water pots away from the paths because they attract rattlesnakes.
The bees and I have known one another for a long time. We first met when I used to have water hyacinths in the rainwater pool. I never harm them intentionally and they never sting me intentionally though of course accidents occur from time to time, but we harbor no hard feelings.
I wasn’t thinking of the wild bees when I filled the pots with water. I was thinking of the rattlesnakes that look for water; I hoped the rattlers would water out in the yard, and not at the dogs’ water bucket next to the front door. The bees came and began to swarm around the water bowls. The bees were unfamiliar with the water bowls and a great many fell into the water and buzzed like speed boats on the surface until they reached the side or drowned. I rescued them with twigs and leaves.
The black plastic lotus tub I keep for my old pit bull to cool herself in exerts a magnetic attraction and many bees drown. I look at the other bees for their reactions to the plights of their fellow workers. They seem unconcerned about the bees in trouble in the water. The drowning bees pile on top of one another to create a staircase out of the bodies of their comrades. I saved bees only to watch them fly and land in the water again, but others seem to learn caution and to be tentative at water’s edge. The commotion warns the other bees to be careful.
Later I hung out the hummingbird feeders so now the wild bees know me best as the one who brings sugar water. The wild bees vie with the woodpeckers and hummingbirds for a turn at the sugar water.
The wild bees sometimes fly in front of my face, intently but without hostility; recently I read that animal intelligence researchers had determined that domesticated bees learn to recognize the faces of those who bring them sugar water. Now I feel no apprehension when the bees fly near my face because I know they are only trying to identify me.
In Chiapas, Mexico the wild honeybees are docile and at ease around people. In the market in San Cristobol de las Casas the bees landed and crawled over the trays of creamy sugar candies and the candy sellers made no move to shoo them until a customer bought a piece of candy.
Around the world recently the keepers of domestic bees report empty hives. No dead bees are found, yet they are gone. After these reports, I worried the wild bees here might also disappear, so I began to pay more attention to them.
First came the sound. A faint hum that rapidly became louder. I knew what to look for: a great swarm of bees because once before I’d heard the sound and saw a great swarm of bumblebees flying very fast. I estimated their speed at forty or fifty miles per hour. This morning the swarm was honey bees, only half the size of the bumblebees but they flew even faster. Both swarms of bees I saw flew from north to south.
Around the time of the first rains in April, the wild bees stopped visiting the hummingbird feeders; I hoped they were merely harvesting the mesquite and catsclaw in bloom then.
After rain the hummingbirds and even the Gila woodpeckers quit drinking the sugar water I offer because the desert pollens and tiny insects hatched by the rain are far more tasty and nutritious than sugar water.
This morning the sunlight caught a piece of glass near the place the javelina have their celebrations after the rain, not far from the Gila Monster Mine. I picked up the glass and it was a five inch clear piece sharp as a dagger. I carried it in my pocket for a while but later lost it in the big arroyo. I found a wonderful nearly round malachite blue stone the size of a quail’s egg.
According to Nahua tradition, there are four Tlaloc or Lords of the Rain who control the precipitation. The Tlaloc reside on mountaintops and in caves. They brew rain or hail and snow in great vats on the mountaintops at night. The Tlaloc also reside in Tlalocan, the Watery Flowery Heaven where only a few are on the list to join them there: warriors, women who died in childbirth, people with stunted growth, the handicapped, those with leprosy or dropsy or gout and those who drowned or were struck by lightning went to Tlalocan. It was said that those who hoarded turquoise died by lightning or drowning. I wonder if I’m hoarding turquoise by keeping the stones and pebbles I find on my walks? I prefer to think that writing about the stones is a way to share the turquoise.
On my walk early this morning the air was so invigorating and the desert plants so lush, and the green blue light so beautiful with the sun behind the mountain that I made up a song as I walked down the long steep hill below the Thunderbird Mine:
beauty beauty
beauty beauty
beauty beauty
as I go oooooooh.
Heyah! Heyah Heyah Heyah ah ah!
I can spot the grains of turquoise on a rock the size of a bread loaf even when there’s only one or two grains the size of a particle of sand. I picked up the rock to look then I replaced it so it would continue to make grains of turquoise.
I’d been cleaning the parrot patio and had left the front gate unlocked because I intended to do some more sweeping and removal of debris. I knew the gate was unlocked when I let the two blue and gold macaws loose in the patio enclosure with the caged cockatoos, but the macaws had not opened it for months because I kept it chained and locked. I thought they’d given up testing the gate. I looped the chain through the gate loosely.
When Bill and I returned from town with groceries around three-thirty p.m. the macaws had worked loose the chain and the patio gate was open. Brittney was clinging to the gate but her long-time companion, Rudy Scruffy, was gone.
I ran around the house and checked all the trees in the yards for the macaw, but no luck. The sun had already dropped behind the foothills west of the house.
First I walked north and east to the vacant property suddenly abandoned this last spring. I walked toward the tallest trees in the area because macaw keepers will tell you the macaws fly to the highest point when they escape.
The lost macaw is turquoise blue and bright yellow. I walked around the empty house and called the macaw’s name. A heavy silence pervaded the place. The house belonged to ghosts. It is too old and too small. The new buyers will demolish it. I checked the tall mesquites and palo verdes near the house but saw no macaw. I began to walk rapidly back up the hill to the house.
I checked on Brittney, the remaining blue and gold macaw. She wasn’t eating because she was upset her companion was gone. I saw a dead dove in the macaw cage and surmised that after the macaws opened the outer gate to the aviary, wild doves went inside to eat the scattered seed and the old pit bull trapped a dove in the macaw cage and killed it. The ruckus of the dog after the dove would have caused the macaws to screech so loudly the dog would have had to retreat, in the process dropping the dove.
I almost didn’t dispose of the dead dove because the sun was down and it would be dark before long. I regretted so much my carelessness with the chain and lock on the gate. I felt sorry for the lone bird; I didn’t want to leave the dead dove in the cage overnight.
I removed it and thought about tossing it down the hillside just outside the yard where scavengers would find it. But I didn’t want to attract scavengers near the house at night because that would cause the dogs to bark and howl in the middle of the night. So I took the dead dove down the hill to the area a little north of the corrals and I left it for the hungry scavengers.