The sky is filled with smoke. Sepia. Golden. Pink. Somewhere behind the haze is a view of San Francisco, which normally on clear days, you can see with great clarity–sometimes you can even see the grid pattern of the windows on the downtown office buildings.
But not this weekend.
This sky is also raining ash. Everything is covered in these fine flakes–the garden, the leaves on the trees, and cars.
The smoke is not from a happy cause. It comes from the fires in Yolo and Napa County, ushered here by a northerly wind. Somewhere in this dust are ancient trees and dead deer and squirrels and burnt cars and dreams.
The sky reminds me of my own trauma, my LA childhood in the early 1980s. LA air quality has much improved since then–I visited recently and was amazed at the clear skies. But the sky of my LA childhood was a dirty pink, a peach-brown, like the healing welt of a second degree burn. I grew up with smog alerts–and despite them, we played outside. By the end of the day, our lungs hurt with each sharp inhale.
My lungs hurt when I think of LA and my childhood. I can’t help but think the pain had everything to do with Los Angeles, because I have no painful memories in New York City–and the actors in my life never changed. It was always me, my mom, my dad, my brother, and I.
My friend moved to LA. It brings her energy and hope. She loves it there. I am supportive of this change–and of her happiness in Los Angeles, even though LA does not bring me the same. One person’s jail is another’s freedom.
We do what we can to survive. We will run away. We will find sanctuary. We will be frantic with pain trying to find safety. We will be restless. We will finally find shelter. Or maybe not.
Speaking of smoke: beekeepers use smoke on bee hives when inspecting. The smoke masks alarm pheromones that would otherwise cause bees to become defensive and…sting the intruder.
I try not to use smoke if I can, especially on my less aggressive hives like East Egg. It freaks the bees out a bit. I rarely use smoke on East Egg.
East Egg was my first hive. Its queen was my beloved queen. She kept her mites down near zero all year last year. She was huge and amber.
A few weeks ago, East Egg’s queen was injured.
So I had to replace her. Which I did. Which is another story.
But because she was not healthy and because she was not laying, and because every time the hive, suspecting her injured state, would build a queen cell with the intention of superseding her, and because she kept ripping the cells down and killing whatever queen potential lay inside, the hive went awhile without brood (aka “bee babies”).
The population dwindled. I am waiting for it to replenish with this new queen, which I placed in the hive about a week ago. You can see that tiny plastic cage. She is inside it, waiting for the bees to get used to her before she is released safely.
East Egg is dwindling. Almost ailing, save for the fact that a new queen is in place.
It is tiny. And it makes me worry. It has so many resources half-finished–honey frames yet to be capped, for instance. There are not enough bees to finish that task. The bees are doing what they can to survive.
I move things around between the two of my hives here in Berkeley. One is a resource for the other. Tangerine Hive gets the uncapped honey frames. There are many bees in Tangerine and they will get the job done.
If the queen of East Egg does not thrive, then I will put a frame of eggs from Tangerine into East Egg, and the worker bees there will convert one of the eggs into a queen.
We do what we can with what we have.
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