Fitz's Opinion: A honey of a visit from the Queen of the bee keepers

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

On a recent warm afternoon I stood in my desert xeriscape among the scarlet, canary yellow and coral pink blossoms of my fairy dusters, brittle bushes and aloes, enjoying the fruits of my labor in my desert Eden when I noticed a multitude of bees laboring about me, in servitude to some distant Queen, probing the floral trumpets, barnstorming my fields of Sonoran ambrosia, buzzing, humming and whirring, a defiant sign that life buzzes on in this season of death and drought.

Later, busying myself at my garden work bench by our shed I heard a humming thrum overhead.

Hmm.

I looked up to see a hive under construction beneath the eave directly above me, a white wax palace of thousands of hexagons, teeming with the very bees my garden had lured here.

I was mesmerized by the worker bees zooming around me, some returning with news of untapped liquid gold while others ferried bounty to her Majesty’s white castle.

I retreated for caution’s sake, vowing I’d move this hive without killing the industrious homesteaders.

All worker-bees are female and all drones are male and of course the males are louts. They don’t harvest, build, do bee dishes or throw out the bee trash.

Lacking stingers, they just do one thing. They make baby bees with the Queen.

All a drone has to do is call up a little Barry White, buzz sweet nothings in the Queen’s ear, do the DNA deed, lose his bee-hood and die a legendary “Father of the Bee Nation” until the next drone in line asks Alexa to play Lou Rawls and the ritual is repeated until the Queen retires to enjoy her 1,798,018,000 Mother’s Day cards that arrive every May, around this time of year.

Q-Anon disciples believe drones are flown remotely by 3-inch high Air Force drone pilots working secretly in a shoebox somewhere in Roswell. Doesn’t sound right to me.

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Backing away from the hive I came eye to eye with an impatient bee buzzing at me to get out of her way. “I have a Queen to serve, you knave.”

That afternoon I found their savior, Monica Miksa-King, a third-generation beekeeper, online. Monica relocates bees alive and reconstructs their hive at her honey farm out by Three Points.

When word spread Monica was coming it created quite a buzz among the bees. Past-president and current vice-president of the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association, Monica’s a scholarly ally of bees, having taught, written and spoken about bees from here to Bisbee and beyond. I’d say she’s the bee all and end all of bees.

Arriving the following dusk, petite sunny-faced Monica hopped down from her working truck and asked, “Where are they?” I showed her. She sized up the situation, grabbed her gear, donned her bee hat, ascended my ladder and began slowly, carefully, gently vacuuming every bee into her portable hive box, a sort of hive away from home.

“Want to hold a drone?” She handed me down a handful of the little Romeos. “They can’t sting you.” Holding the irritated slackers buzzing inside my cupped hands took me back to when I was 10 on my uncle’s strawberry farm catching fireflies.

“Want some honey?” Finishing up, Monica had set aside a few lustrous white chunks of the dissembled hive, glistening with honey, in a bowl for Ellen and me. Unashamed to behave like Winnie the Pooh in sandals I greedily scooped up a paw full of dripping honeycomb and stuffed it into my mouth, declaring this glorious sweet moment would be worth the diabetic coma. It was.

Monica kept most of the hive segments to reconstruct their new hive back home.

“Want to see the Queen?” Monica spotted the captive queen in her portable hive among her whirring minions. She was easy to find thanks to the telltale trail of thousands of tiny Mother’s Day cards. She looked weary of Barry White. I think she’d prefer a little BeeGees now and then.

After Monica packed up the bees, her bee suit and gear we sat and talked about climate change, pesticides, bee genetics, bee varieties, John Belushi, wild bees, why pollinators are so important, planting for pollinators, her bee hive haven and her deactivated — Lord knows why she has one — Titan 2 missile silo.

I drew a portrait of Monica surfing on a swarm of bees and gave it to her along with her very fair bee fee and our bedazzled gratitude. As she drove off into the night with her buzzing cargo back home to her hives, I wondered if I could be her agent. How about a reality show called “Bee Wrangler”?

I told Ellen it would generate plenty of buzz. “You do drone on.” Whoa, Ellen. That one stung.