A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [161]
Why? Varroa mites. They cause deformities and paralysis, introduce viruses, and ultimately kill entire colonies. The best guess on how these mites got here is that in the 1980s a beekeeper smuggled honeybee queens from South America or Europe, hoping their offspring would pollinate more effectively and give more honey than American honeybees. But along with queens the beekeeper accidentally brought varroa mites. Because bees groom each other constantly, mites spread throughout hives into which the queens were introduced, then clung to bees as they entered other colonies, quickly invading hive after hive. Since commercial beekeepers often follow blooms across the country, mites soon overspread the continent.
It would be pointless to blame the die-off on the smuggling beekeeper. The collapse was inevitable anyway.
The strengths that have made modern beekeeping the foundation upon which the agricultural infrastructure rests are precisely the weaknesses that have made beekeeping, and modern agribusiness, vulnerable to something tiny as the mite. These are the intertwined attributes of standardization (the use of one pollinator across many crops), density (the annual gathering of a half-million hives to pollinate almonds, for example), and mobility (the transport of bees, and consequently mites, to and from all parts of the country).
Years ago, working with bees provided me a somatic understanding of cooperation. More recently they taught me about loss. Now, as I watch modern beekeeping collapse under the weight of its own strengths, they're teaching me once again that the modern industrial economy—based as it is upon these same traits of standardization (the conversion of forests to tree farms, grasslands to cornfields, diverse cultures to capitalism), the short-term maximization of resource usage, and the absolute mobility of resources—faces the same vulnerabilities as beekeeping.
Despite the high losses, it's not the end of beekeeping. Each year, new people discover the richness of this craft, and for them high losses and an ever-widening spiral of chemicals may simply be part of the bargain.
As for me, this year I watched a pair of nuthatches try to squeeze into an empty beehive. No matter how they tried, they couldn't make it. With saw and file, I made them a home. They raised babies there, and seemed to like it. So did I.
Even though I often have nightmares, I have never felt unsafe with the Dreamgiver. The horrifying dreams, I feel, have never been without purpose (Yeah, I know my father never beat anyone without good reason, but this feels different). They remind me often of things my conscious mind wants to ignore. It is such with the symbolic underpinnings of our actions of the day—as when my father beat his children attempting to retell the buried story of beatings he'd received, and when we collectively destroy the planet because we so wish to end our way of being—and it is such with the symbolic underpinnings of our actions of the night.
I once asked the Dreamgiver what sort of relationship it wanted with me, and what sort of relationship we had. I fell asleep and soon dreamed I was bobbing up and down far from shore in a deep and warm ocean. I was happy. A huge creature swam up from below to rest just behind me. I did not turn around, nor was I scared. The creature began to play with me, and reached to touch my genitals. Suddenly I was standing on the shore, using a shovel to pick up dog manure and put it in trash cans. I awoke laughing. The Dreamgiver would like nothing more than to come up from the depths to play intimately with me, but, unfortunately, both of us have to spend most of our time cleaning