Vacant

There comes a time in life when you'll have to leave everything behind and start something new. But when that times comes many of you will have your future set. Some will be ready for college others for marriage, but what happens when the person you have decided to spend your life with packs up their bags and says "Honey, let's go." Do you go and leave everything you already had planned behind like if it was a meaningless chapter of your life? Or do you say goodbye and let them go knowing your lives will never cross paths again? Many years, days, hours of hard work all for the purpose of survival are all now a meaningless time of your limited life, all because one very powerful person has pulled the leash on your neck and said "This place is not good enough, lets go."
         
          As I ventured around my grandma's wonderland one evening, I decided to take a closer look at her array of decorations. Her ceramic vases and figures are all of different themes, colors, and sizes. She has frog, snake, bird, gnome and all other kinds of ceramic dolls hanging around in interesting places. None of which have any purpose but to take up space. She likes to hang most of the ornaments off trees if they are small enough and others just sit in the shade of plants. Well anyways, on this particular evening I observed her ornaments and wrote a list down in my field-notes journal. When I was half way around the garden (most of my observations are made as I go counter clockwise around the garden) I was taking note of all the ornaments she has hanging off a particular tree. She has two wind bells, a baby sleeping in a hammock, and a small watering pot. The inside of the watering pot is hollow with a circular entrance in the middle of it. I am pretty sure it is meant to be a bird house or something. Well as curiosity kicked in I peeked inside and saw the silhouette of two spheres. Using the light of my cell phone I realized I was peeking in to an abandoned beehive. The honeycombed spheres rested next to each other unattached from anything(I know this because I moved the watering pot around and they rolled from side to side). The spheres had the familiar hexagonal shapes of honeybee hives and were a light grey color (already sucked dry). I never expected to find something so cool like that. As the excitement passed away I thought to myself why it is that the hives were abandoned? Was it the cold weather? Did the bees run out of interest for the delicious flowers in this little garden? I just had to look this up because I knew my findings would be just as surprising as my grandma's reaction to the hives(my grandma FREAKED and at the same time was happy to know her flowers had their personal pollinators).


Taken by me 10/27/14

          On Wikipedia I found a more accurate description of what a beehive is. The website explains that a beehive is a dense group of hexagonal cells made of beeswax used to store food(honey and pollen) and to house the eggs. The most important purpose for a beehive is to protect the dweller kind of like how a bird's nest protects the bird and its eggs. Another note I found interesting was about artificial beehives(those boxed thingies that hold swarms of angry "domesticated" bees). Artificial beehives are used to pollinate crops in some areas and aside from honey production sometimes they are used to limit the effect of "colony collapse disorder", which pretty much helps manipulate the bee population so it does not collapse. As I continued to read I found out that all beehives have similar blueprints. They consists of layers(like floors in a hotel) that starts with honey at the top, pollen follows under, worker-brood cells next followed by the queen bee's cells in the lower edge. Who would have known that in the bee world upper class gets the bottom floors. Though this was all very interesting it still did not answer my question. Why do bees leave their hives?
          The next website answered my doubts. This website is pretty much another intricate blog by a dedicated blogger. The author of the blog spends time posting all her information on artificial bee hives. After reading her description I came to find she has bees as pets. Weird... The bog name is Honey Bee Suite. In the blog post I read, the author, Rusty Burlew, talks about reason why bees tend to leave hives. It was most definite that the queen bee is at complete fault. Wherever the queen goes the others will follow, no matter what. Her solution to this problem for those who keep bees in artificial hives, was to keep the queen captive for a couple of weeks. The other bees will stay put and begin building a hive which is when it is safe to let the queen out. I found this funny but also very surprising. The rest of the colony has so much dedication towards the queen bee that it is almost insane how "beenapping" the queen prevents all the others from leaving. This is another demonstration of human manipulation. She talks about how if the queen does not like what she sees she will leave even after all the hard work her workers have gone through. They will let everything behind to rot and follow her wherever her wings may take her. She is the boss and manipulator of hundreds of bees. So when it is your time to leave everything behind to start a new life, think about it. Are you the boss or the follower? What is convenient for you?