Starvation

In early April, dirty snow and tender shoots snapping under my boots, I hike out to the hives to listen for humming. Ear pressed to the cold wood I feel my dread crack open. Down in the dark between the frames the colony mass is frozen— they crouch in a ball, pointing to the center, the omphalos that was their queen. There weren’t enough of them— their little bodies weren’t enough to keep her warm, and they starved and froze vibrating with life till the end, so close to honey and pollen. Like the horses in Pompeii, preserved in the traces of harness and cart, almost alive, they labor even in death.   In the still-frozen garden, holding up this frame of ruin, I feel my belly drop out, and the loss expands outward— larger circles of decimation extinction and slow emergency rippling from this gentle decease, hive upon hive lost, and den and nest, hole and warren, eyrie and byre all empty all still—I struggle to pull myself back to just this, just this one hive and what I can do.