It keeps the year.
This week I pulled honey and put pollen patties on. Those two things sound like opposites. They're the same job.
The honey that came off is what the hive can spare — the extractor is in the photograph, and the cappings on the mesh are the wax they sealed it under. What stays in the box is theirs for the winter.
The patties go on because September is when the colony raises the bees that have to last. Summer bees live six weeks and work themselves to death. The ones being raised now live six months, fat with protein, built for holding still in a cluster from November to March. They only come out right if there's pollen to raise them on, and by September the field is thinning. So you give them what the field can't, and you give it now, because in three weeks it's too late to matter.
Take what's spare. Feed what's coming. That's the whole month, and the colony would do its half of it with or without me.
I drew the wheel because that's what the year looks like from inside a box. Not months. Foragers, then the swarm hanging in the fir, then the field going over, then the sealed door. Four quarters, the queen at the hub of all of them, and the colony answering each one on time, every year, without a calendar.
The Hive Year. Full back print. Black 3001C, heavyweight 3010C, women's V-neck. Gold on black, the way a frame looks in a headlamp. The four seasons are cut into the cartouches, not printed on them — the shirt shows through the letters.
First design of the cold months. A few more before the solstice, one at a time, each one here before it is anywhere else.
Douglas
IronHive Co. · Sutherlin, Oregon