Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

ombus love
Erin Halcomb
This past spring, I fell in love with bees.
There was some nuance to it; it wasn’t like I
fell for every single thing that had four wings.
I fell for the biggest, Bombus, those within
the bumble bee genus. Their morphology
resembles gnocchi. They have gold and black
shag across their backsides, fringe all down
their legs, and fur on their cheeks.
Perhaps it was because they weren’t
whizzing past, or half-deep in anthers, that
my attention gained such traction. And
neither was I, so to speak. I was on a foray
for mushrooms but at best I was browsing.
The woods were gilded in pollen. They
echoed with thrush song. I bent down to
pick up a castaway can and caught sight of a
bumble on the ground. First, I was taken by
her heft and her hair, and then by the way
she carried herself. She was velveteen and
bulbous. She crawled – marched, flounced
– across the forest floor. Nearby, I heard
another. I found her hovering low, also intent
with survey.
These were the Spring Queens, the lone
survivors of last year’s colony. They, too,
were hunting not for quarry but for home.
They were searching for a bunker, for
some abandoned burrow, to finish in
waxen chambers.
I began watching, I mean really seeing things,
years ago. I’d been hired to do so, to sit on
a mountaintop and look-out. I worked for
the Forest Service. I watched for fires. I soon
took notice of smaller beings. I began to hear
the quiet types, humming. In the subalpine
meadows surrounding the lookout, I
remember watching a bee land and latchon
to a bloomed obelisk. Its added weight
had caused a sway and I’d smiled in simple
pleasure. I knew little else about the bee’s
labor than its byproduct, a name, pollination.
Oh, but now I know. Only bits and bobs,
but still: Bees are wasps that went vegan.
Bumbles specialized further by becoming
fleeced and all that fuzz enables them to fly
in cold weather and on cloudy days. They
summit peaks of 10,000 feet.
They have stinky feet. They dig and spit
and whirr; hitch together their film-thin
wings; and heave their not-so-svelte selves
to and fro swatches of color. For most of
their lives, Bombus mine flowers. They pack
loaves of protein into paneers on their hind
thighs and, vamoose, they take to the aerial
interstate. Flight speeds can reach 10 miles
per hour.
We arrange bumbles according to stripes,
and by the length of their tongues. We study
their flower fidelity. One scientist tied tinsel
to the leg of a queen and chased after her in
a quest to discover her lair.* Hives are hard
to find.
The largest bumbles in the world -- ginger
ping-pong balls in Patagonia – are on the
cusp of extinction. Parasites, habitat loss,
and poison: we have not done right by them.
Bombus franklini used to fly the meadows
that I once strolled but none have been
found for a decade. That’s about the same
amount of time that has elapsed since I
worked on the lookout, and it’s passed
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