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The Queen Signal

The document discusses the important role of the queen bee in a hive and what happens when she dies. It describes how worker bees will try to rear a new queen by developing larvae in special queen cups. It also discusses what happens to a hive that has lost its queen - the bees become disoriented and fly around frantically without any organization or place to land until they eventually swarm together in a new location.

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Esther Nolasco
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93 views1 page

The Queen Signal

The document discusses the important role of the queen bee in a hive and what happens when she dies. It describes how worker bees will try to rear a new queen by developing larvae in special queen cups. It also discusses what happens to a hive that has lost its queen - the bees become disoriented and fly around frantically without any organization or place to land until they eventually swarm together in a new location.

Uploaded by

Esther Nolasco
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Queen Signal (EXCERPT)

STORY BY KIMBERLY GARZA

A colony (or a family) can recover from the loss of a queen bee ... but it takes time

Of the tens of thousands of honeybees in a hive, the queen stands apart. Her body is longer and fuller than the other females’, her wings
shorter. The workers and drones cluster and throb around her, their sun.

Usually, the queen lives longest; her lifespan can stretch more than three to five years past the average worker’s. But sometimes she does
not. Sometimes the colony finds itself hollow, without its heartbeat.

***

Around 50,000 bees and one queen have invaded the roof of my childhood home in Uvalde, Texas, making their way through the
uppermost eastern corner, humming between wall and cream-colored exterior siding. They’ve been there a while, according to my dad. He
says he and Mom noticed them months ago, when they were out in the backyard gardening.

As we wait for the one-man removal crew to show up, we sit outside, eyeing the bees from the far end of the lawn: Dad, my sister,
Lindsay, five cousins, and me. He mentions how, the first time they saw the bees, he swatted at them, and Mom scolded him for it.

She was the one who crushed scorpions on the kitchen floor with little fanfare, or pretended to pluck wolf spiders from the wall and
throw them at us as we shrieked and she cackled. She had strong feet, callused from a lifetime of walking barefoot—on our tiled floor, our
stubby grass, and before that the hot, damp gravel of Galveston, and before even that the provinces of Mindoro, the island in the
Philippines where she was born.

It first happened just yesterday. The three of us stole a quiet moment on the patio chairs while the rest of the family gathered in the
kitchen, organizing the latest delivery—foil trays of brisket and tamales and fruit and sliced bread. Our days have been a stream of
soups, cold cuts, and homemade pan dulce delivered around the clock by people from town, as if they’re afraid Dad, Lindsay, and I will
waste away. As if they know we secretly want to.

***

Nine days ago, when the men from the funeral home arrived—patients of my father who called him “Dr. Garza” and wiped tears from their
eyes as they mentioned “Ms. Rose”—Lindsay ran so fast in her rush to get up the stairs and away that she tripped over her socks. Dad
and I watched her go. I stood by his side while they explained the next steps, and when he curled his shoulders inward to weep, I tried to
straighten mine, tried to be strong. They handed me paperwork, which I tucked into a blue folder someone from hospice had left.

A few weeks after the bees are gone, Lindsay and I will gather the courage to go through my mother’s closet. We will sort through her
clothes, the piles of souvenir T-shirts and patterned hospital scrubs that she stockpiled. We will finally empty the oversized Brighton
purse that holds her wallet, makeup bag, crumpled receipts with the print of her mouth where she blotted her plum-red lipstick, the case
of perfumed powder she carried around to dry and cool her skin. Her work ID with her titles—Rosemarie R. Garza, PhD, M.Ed., RN—and
an old picture from before she lost weight. Her cheeks are plumper, her hair streaked with blond highlights. There’s the small smile she
always used in poses, and the tilt of her head to make her round face look slimmer, a trick I have learned too.

Here is the smell. Lindsay will put her face in the purse as if trying to wear it. She will not only let me hold her, she will sink into me.

***

When the queen dies, the queen signal dies, too.

The worker bees grow frantic. They immediately attempt to rear an emergency queen from among the young brood. They renovate
breeding cells into so-called queen cups—roughly the size of a peanut shell, suspended vertically on the hive—to mature successor eggs
or larvae. They guard the heirs apparent; they wait for close to two weeks to see if, within the comfort of the cups, another queen is
growing.

***

Our friend drives off with most of the hive in his crates, and we watch from inside the house. Queenless, the remaining bees are lost.

They take wing, flying separately in no pattern at all. Roaming, circling, frantic. They fill the sky above our patio, and the air around our
live oak trees, like starlings. So many do we see, so thick do they black out the blue, that it seems impossible that any portion of them
has been taken away.

They can’t settle on a place to land; they swirl and swerve and crash into each other like blown leaves. I imagine the signals they shared,
scattered. I imagine their queen’s pheromones fading away, as new, threatening scents the bees don’t recognize take over.

Dad stands beside me and Lindsay, looking out the window. The beekeeper has told us it will take a few hours, but they will eventually
swarm. They will collect onto a spot, like a tree branch or a shrub, and call to one another to gather. It looks like they won’t, but they
will. Just wait.

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