Sting of Death: Homily For A Honey Bee

On Francis’ Day I found her — grounded, and lost.

Disoriented, far from the dark comforts of her hive, now foraging on pavement she was never meant to taste.

I thought of the Nippon Daisy at home, not far — heavy with autumn buds, some now blooming.

I wondered whether she would like a flower to read to take her mind off the late-season death now weighing on her wings, dampening any possibility of further flight.

“Have you had a full, flowery six weeks?” I wondered to myself, half-aloud, lending my palm as she staggered to latch onto anything green, or warm, or living.

The more her graceful limbs began to glitch, the more deeply I knew I could not let her be alone in these last moments of her small, pollen-bearing life.

So now, myself a clunky colossus by comparison, bore her by cupped hands though she still had faint hints of hive energy to crawl, to try to move forward, to live her every last ounce of Apis life. I could only hope my presumptuous, human-handed intervention was not an insult to her stalwart, bee-bright bravery.

Palm to palm, I lifted her along by invisible paths in the air that her wings once carved with flawless, enzyme-calculated beauty — and promised myself I would not drop her if she felt she needed to sting. She didn’t.

I could not let her be.

Bee. Alone.

Not on St. Francis’ Day, a day we Image-Bearing creatures traditionally set aside to intentionally, verbally, sacramentally recognize and bless the wild and wondrous creatures we’re given to see, to shepherd, to steward.

All the Otherly creatures, but perhaps most commonly we bless the ones with canine attributes and dogg-ed dignity, along with the occasional feline, rodentia, bird or reptile.

For today, how could I possibly hope to bring my full humanity to this impossibly beautiful bee? To bestow the gift of seeing, naming, honoring her distinct Insectahood. How often do I thoughtlessly overlook her kind, all around me, forgetting the Image Bearer Blessing I have to bestow.

I could not bear to let her flicker out un-seen. Not alone. Not on St. Francis’ Blessing Day.

We arrived at the flowering daisies in front of our home, and I chose a large one with plenty of open petals for her to rest on, to taste, to smell or to read.

Her head had begun to twitch in a way I knew could not have been comfortable, and one delicately poised leg was now convulsing with some electric charge that told me she was not feeling at all like herself, and probably not up for any reading on this afternoon.

I wondered what she did feel, though. What she thought, what she saw.

Perhaps, in some far corner of her honey-waxed consciousness, the floral aroma of this massive daisy now enveloping her senses was enough to impart a glimmer of what it meant for her to be a bee: A vocational flower drifter, a tireless worker, a pollen packer, an artisan honey crafter. A life-sustaining pollenator, and provider. A crucial creature.

What split-second memories flashed before the dimming depths of her many-lensed and iridescent eyes, I will never know. Perhaps she saw her warm hive home. Felt her first flight, or the un-lidded brightness of the exploding sun, illuminating the way to pollen paths. Perhaps she felt her limbs remembering their hexagonal dances to guide her fellow workers to newfound families of flowers. Perhaps.

But now she twitched so suddenly — she tumbled, falling out of the opened-faced flower, down into the dark mulch bed beneath. I was not fast enough to catch her.

I held my breath, parting the thick, plant branches, kneeling, peering down. My two, simple human eyes could not make out a tiny insect form apart from scraps of leaves and dirt and mulch. I could discern nothing but earthen ephemera.

Then, I saw it — a spider. Immediate as a thought he appeared from underneath a chunk of mulch, two of eight arms held high ready to snatch, as soft and silent as a pulse he stood poised, beholding her with his own array of calculating arachnid eyes. I knew she must be lying nearby. A glance to my right, an inch or two — there she was, still twitching, as helpless as if she’d been caught in his woeful, woven web.

One scarce movement more from my clumsy shape and the spider skulked back beneath the bark as instantly as he’d appeared, and doubtlessly watched from his dark den as I grasped at a shattered scrap of leaf, lifting the fallen lady bee up as with a stretcher, hoisted by my helicopter hand.

This time I held her in my palm, using one hand to bend a daisy downward near her quivering antennae. An urgency to speak to her, to say something — anything, came over me, and like Francis to the birds, I preached a single-sentence homily to this bee:

“It’s going to be ok — the Creator is making all thing new — some day your many Sisters will make the sweetest, most golden honey that never runs dry, in ever-living hives.”

At that, she stung me in the soft flesh of my palm — involuntarily, I thought. Convulsions seizing her, she pierced me with a pain I have not felt since the barefoot-dandelion-days of my unwieldy childhood.

Before my brain could stop my hands, I stood and let her drop, again, as I promised myself I wouldn’t — and this time she was lost to me completely. I looked for her, and for the hungry spider. Nothing stirred, nothing buzzed.

A mourning loneliness of loss descended over me as golden-heavy as the sunset that now began to seep into the crevices of the clustered neighborhood.

I’d spent all of 20 minutes with her — with this bee, out of the 6 to 8 weeks that would have been her life. I loathed myself for dropping her. My palm throbbed, buzzing, beginning to swell. I would need to pluck her stinger out.

But after all, it is right that I could not bear the many barbed burning of her dying sting.

The most thoroughly human thing I knew to do was to see her, acknowledge her, be present to her, ‘protect’ her — and on this day even to ‘preach’ to her. To tell her that it’s all going to be made right, someday. That in fact, that work has already begun, though on afternoons like this it’s more difficult to sense and see.

There is only one Hand both tender and true enough to bear the Sting of Death; one True Human able to hold the both the Sting and those who are dying, hiding them deeply in Himself — and I am not that human.

I can, however, point beyond myself, me with a stinger in my hand that I cannot bear, saying to this bee along with St. Francis Bird & Beast Blesser, or even with John the Baptist, or Mary Magdalene…

…or Pontius Pilate:

“Ecce Homo, Behold the Man.”

The truly Human One has made things right, is making things right, and finally will make all things new and right.

Yes, even for the honey bees.

Amen. +