I love watching the carpenter bees in my backyard.
Now that spring is slowly turning into summer and I’ve planted all
the fruits and vegetables I can, I spend a lot of time sitting on the
deck in my backyard. There’s something calming about just existing
in the old, dirty chair with the unwashed tiles beneath my feet and the
warped wooden railing forming prison bars over verdant greenery, my
thoughts pinging around my head while the trees sway in the wind, birds
fly overhead, and plants grow in the sun’s warmth. In the midst of
this all, carpenter bees flit back and forth, the steady buzzing of
their wings forming a pleasing background to the otherwise quiet sounds
of spring. I see them fly and hover and pollinate the blueberry bushes
as I sit there, but mostly, they fight. With sudden acceleration, groups
of two and three and even four bees speed toward each before they
eventually disengage and fly from view. On rare occasions, they’ll
grapple in midair - the bees come close enough to come in contact, and
as their tiny stubby legs scrabble for purchase, the buzzing of their
wings pauses as they tumble toward the earth, only to resume as they
separate and fly away moments later.
Of course, carpenter bees aren’t the only flying insects in my
backyard. Paper wasps, yellow jackets, flies, and eastern tiger
swallowtails all fly around as well, but it’s always the bees that
arrest my attention. I think this is for two reasons. First, I spent
most of my childhood thinking they were bumble bees, and only a few days
ago, I discovered they were in fact carpenter bees - what was once a
benign piece of nature has taken a more sinister, dangerous tone.
Instead of black-and-yellow friends that only pollinate the plants in my
garden, they’ve become little axes, miniature sticks of dynamite
that explode against the wood of my deck. Even writing these words I
feel the last vestiges of my childhood slip away and the grumpiness and
jadedness of adulthood set in, but at the same time, oddly enough, I
don’t care. If the deck falls down and forms a heap of wooden
beams and planks tomorrow, I would simply move to the patio and continue
my contemplations there. Like putting lipstick on a pig, I think to
myself when I feel a fleeting urge to kill the bees, or more generally,
to fix or clean something around my house - why fight the inevitability
of nature? Why try to maintain a house already plagued and mired with
years and years of neglect, one that looks like a redneck hoarder house
when all the ones in the cul-de-sac across the street are clean, tidy,
and perfect?
The other reason why the bees arrest my attention is the tiny, but
unpredictable sense of danger they imbue. Minutes of silence can
suddenly be broken up as one roars past my head like a P-51 Mustang.
Even if the last thing on the bee’s mind is to sting, the
implication - the possibility that I could feel a lightning bolt of pain
from doing nothing but sipping my tea or beer - keeps me alert. And as
the bees continuously grapple and fight with each other, over and over
and over again, I keep comparing them to enemy pilots locked in a
dogfight. There’s only so much wood, so much territory, for the
bees to establish homes and raise future generations, and nature, red in
tooth and claw, ensures that some of them will die, all while I sit in
my chair, resting and watching and thinking about my own life.