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My eldest son and I drive to our “land.” It is in the hill country of Texas. My wife discourages a more sophisticated moniker, explaining that a “ranch” must have cattle and a “farm” must have fields. Ours has only a gravel road snaking through a juniper forest that, itself, climbs ever so steeply up the rocky hill and down to a pond that is only about as wide as it is deep. Locals call the overhanging basalt a “cave,” but it is only an eroded undercut of limestone so that appellation is not permitted, either. On our “land,” and in our “undercut of limestone,” nothing is plowed and nothing is domesticated. Coyotes, birds, deer, turkey, and rabbits settle their own claims.
As we enter the gate, we stop to turn the valve that permits water to flow from the underground wells to our humble abode. There, within the buried meter housing we stumble upon thousands of interlopers, swarming and homesteading our meter with their little sticky hexagons.
Honey bees!
“What to do?” I thought. I cannot let them remain there. After much consideration, I thought it best to transfer them from their precarious home before the elements destroyed it, which was inevitable given all the circumstances. They had not made a good choice.
WARNING: Apiculturists: read no further.
I returned home, searched online for help, learned what a worker, a queen and a drone looked like, marked pictures in a book, and exchanged emails with the president of a local beekeeping club.
“Are they Africanized?” the president emailed back.
“How would I know?” I typed.
“Have you been around them?
“Yes, I played with them all morning, letting them land on my arms and watching them work.”
“Are you emailing this from your home or the hospital?”
“From my home.”
“They’re not Africanized.”
I discovered that Dadant Company provided all the supplies I needed. So, I forked over two big ones and soon was the proud owner of 150 pieces of various and sundry sticks of pinewood. I spent Saturday morning with hammer, nails, and glue, painted the outside and soon had a very nice home for my new little settlers.
Off to the “land” we go. I suit up in my hat and gloves and light the smoker, all of which was provided in the kit from Dadant. I do, indeed, look the part. My son decides he will use his longest telephoto for the pictures. He will document the very first bee colony to settle on our “land.”
I open the meter, give the working class a blast or two of smoke, stand on my head to peer inside, and there they are. But, where is the queen? As near as I can tell, all those girls look alike. Rotating upright, I decide to check the book, again. I must now read through the netting and also through a dense cloud of bees that are gathering to assist. Okay, the book shows the queen to be much larger than the rest of the gang. Standing on my head, I look again, this time with one of those high-intensity flashlights.
Rotate back. Another check of the book. Maybe they are Africanized after all and I have stumbled upon a tribe of pygmies.
Down I bend again, upside down, peering in with a load of sweat dripping out of the webbing and onto the swarm. No queen. Well, what to do? I gently brush a few aside and try to find her. Suspecting rape, all those noble Amazons draw their swords. They buzz their trumpets. They release their canisters of pheromone. Reinforcements are coming through the forest like Jedi knights. War has been declared.
What to do? I must take action.
I break loose all the combs and lift combs and swarm (as best I can) into the hive I spent 200 bucks and hours constructing, a wonderful home that should have looked like a palace compared to their grubby little water meter. No one agrees. I put all the bees into the hive and all the bees came back out of the hive and back into their crummy little water meter that now has only stubs for combs.
I wonder, “Does God have feelings?”
Not a single bee understands that my home will protect them from the wasps, the ants, the torrid dry summer in a dutch oven, and the winter to come. Their choice will mean disaster for the entire swarm. My choice will mean success and prosperity for years to come. They don’t get it.
“What we have here is a “fay-i-yore to communicate.”
Alternatives are dwindling. I make a desperate move. I chase them all out of the meter box and close up their entrance port. Now, they must either to go into my hive or abandon the site altogether. Which will it be?
They are undoubtedly too worked up to think rationally.
I can sense a plan not coming together.
I pass the peace pipe around again, take off my headgear and gloves and sit down in the midst of the cloud, like Job among his “friends.” It is a risky move not given to logic. I explain to them what I am trying to do. (Being God’s creatures, they must understand God’s language, commonly known as the Texas vernacular.) There is a lot of fast talking on my part but not much listening on theirs.
I leave them to consider whether on this battlefield any bee so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
Soon, I shall report their decision.
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Oh, by the way, this blog is about technology and persuasion. In today’s very true episode there are six lessons in persuasion, lessons discussed in my book. Can you find them?