Recently Neil Gaiman spoke of hiving a swarm of bees. He wrote with justifiable pride and a sweet gentleness.
Not too many days ago my youngest son and I witnessed a swarm. It formed a cylinder perhaps sixty feet high. It spiraled in front of a neighbor’s front yard tree and slowly the bee swarm diminished as each bee in the stack filtered in on its own personal landing schedule.
The hive got busy for a day or so, then one morning we noticed our neighbor had sprayed expanding foam into the slit where the bees entered the tree.
This outraged us.
Next morning, he’d sealed it over with concrete.
Mass murder, callous idiocy, and the destruction of a viable hive of honeybees, all from ignorance, fear, and stupidity.
Yes, I’d talked to him about how glorious and wonderful the swarm had been to witness, and what a privilege. His reply had been, “Wait ’til after dark.”
Murderers prefer to work in the dark.
I am sad I did not call a beekeeper the first day to come get another prize hive.
I am disgusted to be a member of the so-called human species.
