Mr. and Mrs. Buzz

by David Benjamin

“Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” 

— Sue Monk Kidd

MADISON, Wis. — My childhood teetered between bee fear and bee fascination. Fascination won. I became, for one summer, a hunter of great baritone bumblebees, stalking them among gladioli and zinnias and clamping them into a pickle jar.

The fleshy membrane between my left thumb and index finger still retains the faint evidence of my pickle-jar career because I couldn’t capture any bug at all lest first I punched a dozen holes in the jar’s lid, so the captives could breathe.

Think of it. Bees breathe, just like we do. In and out, Huff, puff, whew!

To puncture the lid, I used an icepick monogrammed with the name, address and phone number of the Tomah locker plant, whose main purpose was the frozen storage of venison from last year’s deer season. I was not an entirely deft icepicker. As a result, every few weeks, while I fashioned breathing holes for my six-legged quarry, I missed the lid and speared my hand, between thumb and index. My first self-stabbing was a shock, but by the third or fourth, it was routine. I bled very little and waited to see if sepsis ensued. If it did, I informed my grandmother, Annie, who, when necessary, doubled as an ER surgeon.

The bumblebees I caught were unfortunate because, once in the jar, even with leaves and flowers to amuse them, they never got out and I had no actual use for them. They died, laden with pollen and unfulfilled. I prefer to think that, a summer later, when I eschewed bumblebee safaris, it was because of a moral maturation that precluded the suffocation of innocent creatures. More likely, I’d grown bored with bottling bees.

Among insects I continued to dread, and wouldn’t dream of hunting, were the fierce-faced hornets called yellowjackets. Seen without prejudice, these are beautiful creatures, their bodies a harlequin of black and gold — tiny Pittsburgh Steelers with feelers. Yellowjackets were deemed dangerous by one and all, a perception I saw reinforced one day at a little park that bordered our local WPA reservoir, Lake Tomah. A boy, romping and playing in the grass, stepped on an exposed tree root, which — dead, rotten and brittle — was the ideal place for a yellowjacket nest. Which it was.

Instantly, a raging cloud of angry hornets — defending their Queen and able to sting repeatedly without harm to their general wellbeing (unlike honeybees, who can only sting once, and die) — erupted from the earth beneath the hapless boy. The poor kid was blitzed and blistered by the bees and eventually rushed to a hospital. The park cleared of all human presence within less than sixty seconds. Observing the swarm’s easterly flight, I fled west, all the way to Annie’s porch. I stayed away from the lake — just in case — for two days.

The trouble with yellowjackets, unlike most bees, is that they’re sociable with people. Everywhere in the world, they’re a familiar, abundant and persistent accompaniment to al fresco dining. The silver lining in these intrusions, unbeknownst to most picnickers, is that yellowjackets away from the nest are aggressive only in pursuit of provender. They’re not remotely interested in he people who are, indeed, the authors of their feast. Mi picnic es su picnic.

I was reminded of this bee behavior quirk thanks to a Times science-page piece by Cara Giaimo. It stirred memories of several hornets I have known. 

When Hotlips (my wife) and I were living in California, we had a patio out back of our house, where we staged many a plein-air barbecue, especially on weekends. These occasions invariably drew yellowjackets. Our instinctive response to the invasion was to wave at them as they zipped and capered around our heads. Of course, we soon wearied of our feckless defense and simply settled into irritable coexistence. 

But then, Buzz fell into my beer.

Of course, he didn’t have a name before his mishap, and calling him Buzz lacked imagination. But this was one of life’s spontaneous thrills. 

Buzz had been in my beer, a nice amber called Red Tail, for a while before I noticed him struggling to keep his feelers above the foam. Hotlips and I studied his dilemma for a harrowing (for Buzz) delay before I used a fork to rescue him and set him gently on the oilcloth. He lay absolutely still, soaked to the spirocles, his little wings drenched and draggled. We figured him a goner and went back to our meal. Other yellowjackets stilled hovered and swooped but showed no concern for their fallen hivemate. 

Suddenly, in the corner of my eye, something stirred. I looked down and there was Buzz, feebly fluttering his forewings and scrabbling weakly for purchase, on the slick surface of the table, with his hairy little feet. 

“Hey, he’s alive!”

From that moment, Buzz’s revival proceeded with steady pace and heartrending courage. Slowly, by flapping and pivoting them, Buzz diligently dried his wings. In five minutes, he was back on his feet, staggering tipsily along the oilcloth, leaving a wet trail with his sagging abdomen.

Hotlips and I couldn’t help but burst into cheers and applause — fifteen minutes after Buzz’s near-drowning in Red Tail ale — when he hopped once, razzling robustly, bounced off the table and then took flight, disappearing like a bat out of a brewery.

This bonding experience formed for us a kinship with yellowjackets that banished trepidation and transcended annoyance. We began looking forward to their arrival and invited them cordially to join our every picnic. 

We gained a deeper admiration for the wits and pluck of our hornet buddies when we noticed one on my dinner plate one warm California evening. As we watched, we decided to call her Mrs. Buzz, because by then we had remembered that “workers” in bee society are all female (Buzz himself was actually a girl). 

On my seemingly empty plate, Mrs. Buzz had glommed onto a tiny uneaten fragment of New York strip. To us, it was a morsel too small to bother with. To Mrs. Buzz, it took on the relative dimensions of a side of beef. She couldn’t lift it and carry it whole back to the nest. So, ferociously, she began to carve it, sinking her little mandibles into the meat and snipping away at it, scowling and growling as she gnawed her way. The face of a yellowjacket in deep and determined forage mode is a wonderful, fearsome sight. If she were to pause and stare straight into your eyes, you might well leap back in alarm. If looks could kill, Mrs. Buzz was Norman Bates’ mom.

But she didn’t care a whit about her human spectators. This was her meat and she had to cut it loose before the humans took it in their gourdlike heads to clear the table. After sawing away tenaciously for ten minutes, there! A perfect chunk of portable steak clutched in the greasy jaws of Mrs. Buzz.

Again, we cheered, we clapped, we laughed, and we watched proudly as Mrs. Buzz lifted from our picnic, circled the table triumphantly, wobbled her wings like a B-17 after a bomb run over Hamburg and struck a bee line for the dusky horizon. 

We stayed at the table ’til after dark, hoping that Mrs. Buzz would come back for more.