bees

Ait Ali is humming again. I remember last year, my head was all fuzzy with changed sleep patterns, new food, and an avalanche of new words. I stepped out onto my host family’s roof/balcony and heard this all encompassing humming. At the time I thought, “Sweet heaven, that canNOT be the flies… but there are a lot of flies… ooog.” It wasn’t flies though. It’s bees. Hundreds of thousands of bees. Hurrying to every flower they can find. The air is abuzz with their activity.
Ait Ali is known for it’s honey. There are a couple kinds made here. There is rosemary honey, or “white honey” as they call it. It is white, too, especially when it crystallizes. Pure, sparkly, creamy white. It’s delicious. There is also “black honey,” which isn’t quite black, but it is very dark. Its flavor is complex and delicious. It is not easy to get your hands on any of this honey, though. Those who have their own hives (most people) eat all the honey themselves. The cooperative sells the honey in big cities. The women’s association sells the honey to the first comers, I guess, and the que fills up fast.
This year is supposed to be really good for the bees. We had a lot of rain in the spring, so there were just bunches of flowers. The bees responded by reproducing. Hive after hive swarmed, and the beekeeper experts would don home-made bee hats, and coax the bees into a big basket with the help of a large metal spoon. A honey bee swarm is when the number of bees gets to big for the physical size of the hive. The queen then lays a new queen egg, and once she matures, she leaves. She takes half the hive with her, and they start a new hive somewhere else. Bees are much more aggressive when they are getting ready to swarm. They just come after you randomly sometimes. At different times, one part of the village would suddenly become dangerous to traverse. People would drape scarves over their heads and run. My host family’s bees swarmed, too.. they swarmed to right outside my front door. One morning I stepped outside my door, and locked it, and as I walked away, I thought “Gee, that sounds like a whole lot of bees really close by…” and I turned my head to see a couple thousand of them clustered on a small log sticking out of my neighbors wall, hanging on each other like the monarchs do in Mexico. A solid mass of humming, buzzing, worried bees. I stood stock still and stared, and then quietly walked away. A short time later the bee-man came with his bee-hat, his basket, his metal spoon and his sting-impervious hands and feet.
I like the bees. I like bees even better when they like me. Maybe someday I will be a beekeeper and grow medicinal plants (rosemary, lavender, sage…) for my bees to drink nectar from and make delicious honey. I think it would be fun!