You Have To Tell The Bees Or They Leave
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Which subscriptions you’re still paying for out of pure guilt is the least sexy thing I sell, four bucks to answer, and 115 people have already paid it.
The press behind the Cyber-Tek zine asks two dollars for a field manual on dead drops and shortwave by a man who signs himself Tom Redacted.
THE TIP. There’s a chore on old farms nobody wrote down: you have to go tell the bees.
Death, birth, a wedding with a scrap of cake tied to the box, somebody moving out. Any big change in the house, somebody walks to the hives before the neighbors hear it secondhand, knocks soft, and says it out loud. The English brought it over on boats. Appalachia never put it down. Skip it. The bees notice. They swarm off, or stop making honey. Or they die in the box. Over a thing nobody told them.
People still do this! September 2022, the royal beekeeper went down the hives at Buckingham Palace, tied black ribbon on each, and knocked. “The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you.” Whittier put nearly that line in a poem in 1858. Same damn script, 164 years later. A man on the palace payroll. Talking to a wooden box. In a suit. On the clock.
I don’t keep bees and I don’t think a hive grieves. Probably. But I’ve been talking to my compost bin like it’s got opinions, so who the hell am I to laugh?
If any of you freaks keep bees and this is all old news, hit reply and tell me what you actually say to them. I want the exact wording. ~ J.D.
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End of brief · the tower is warm