The Silence of the Bees

Last night I had a dream in which we were scientists. The world was falling apart and people were looking to us for answers. The disintegration started with the honey bees. In the first instance, scientists found high prevalence of Israel Acute Paralysis virus in colonies that had collapsed. I believed the solution to any problem in a system had to be a systemic one. My quasi eureka moment was splicing a gene from the Africanised honey bee to provide immunity against the virus. The virus was eradicated but the colonies continued to collapse.

The hopelessness I felt when confronted with the rising disorder of the universe seemed to settle in the well of my heart and I began to give up hope. No bees, no crops. In a world where technology ruthlessly ran away with itself, the pollination of flowers was still dependent of the honey bee’s exquisite dance from flower to flower. It was you who shared with me the words of Richard Rohr, that most of God's physical, animal and human world is on the verge of mass suicide and extinction. I could not see how this understanding could help the bees. Our suffering is a crisis of meaninglessness but bees have no meaning. The co-evolution of plants and pollinators was driven by the blind fingers of mutation and natural selection, groping unconsciously in the dark. This mutualism knows no love.

‘We don’t start with the bees, we start with ourselves’ was your mantra and though I could not see the connection, time proved you right. The collapse of the colonies was a direct result of man’s behavior on a delicate and sophisticated environment and by looking at ourselves we were able to pinpoint the exact cause. Yet it is one thing to identify a problem and another to remove it. We are reluctant to change.

Sometimes I go into the garden behind my new house and put on my UV glasses to see the world as the bees see it. I am glad that their low song drones on, it means the garden is exactly as I used to dream it when I was a girl. The bumble bees punctuate the lavender bushes and the honey bees drink from the Aster flowers. I think about you and how you showed me that my remote, impersonal, disinterested God was far closer than I ever could have imagined. When I cannot believe that there is an answer and give up, it is then that I allow him to break through.