Befuddled bees hover as I clip lettuce, read in the sun.

Our new winged livestock seem unready to sip nectar, fill their hive with honey.  Instead, they push the grass aside and slip in and out of the tiny hole in their wooden box.

They test the air around my body, smelling the sugar syrup I sprayed on their travel crate to calm them.  Maybe they catch the scent of the queen whom I momentarily slipped into my front pocket to protect and keep warm.

I can see the bees sniffing, tasting.  Is it captivity if you choose to live in a painted blue box?  If you choose to accept the ministrations and thieveries of a warm-blooded mammal?  Or is it friendship?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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