Out Of Many [Bees], One [Hive]

Bees can inspire us all to do better, instead of yelling at each other

I could go on and on about how amazing bees are. Besides crucial to many crops, like apples and almonds, they can provide reflections on how we can work with each other. Each colony, generally consisting of a queen, some drones during the summer, and a lot of worker bees, who tend the young and gather nectar and pollen.

During the course of a season, a colony grows in the spring, sustains itself in the summer and builds out the hive, and spends the fall getting ready for the winter. The colony needs a certain amount of bees and stored food to make it through the cold. If a hive looks like it won’t have enough bees, or it’s lost its queen, you can actually combine two hives, either two weaker colonies, or a strong and a weak colony, in order to save the hive, and give a better shot at making it through the winter.

Since modern beekeeping uses frames and boxes to give the colony a home, it’s just a matter of taking the weaker colony, and putting it on top of the desired colony. The one catch is the bees need to get used to each other. Bees give off pheromones, which help identify friends and enemies. But just like we can get used to those around us, bees can become accustomed to someone’s smell, and accept them as one of their own. When you combine the hives, you need to place a piece of newspaper between the two colonies to slow the mingling. The bees will slowly eat the paper, and then get to know each other as they mix. And what were two separate colonies become a single colony.

We need more newspapers in our society. And not the news on the paper, because that’s tearing us apart, but we need gentle norms that allow us the mingle with our colleagues, neighbors, and friends so that we can become accustomed to their ideas, and remind ourselves of what make our country unique and unitary. Like the newspaper allowing the two hives to get to know each other so they can work for the survival and blossoming of the colony, basic decency and cordiality can help us all work together.

Unfortunately, we have two very weak colonies, with two very weak and pugnacious queens. Obviously, the behavior of Donald Trump drove lots of people crazy, and away from the Republican Party. And last night’s address by Joe Biden showed he can go just as low, and dismiss half the country from the political discourse.

The proper way to work through these problems is to talk about the policies, and not the people. Take the threats to the operation of our republic. I think everyone can see there is a break down, where our representatives can't work together. On the federal level, it’s because they spend all their time fundraising. On the local level, ideologies hold sway over trying to find a common ground. A better way forward would for everyone to try to list the problems we see without assigning blame. Then we can pinpoint areas everyone agrees on, and we can work to solve the majority of the problem.

Our weak hives of partisanship may never coalesce, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all try to work together to respect election outcomes, solve everyone’s problems, and leave a republic for our children and grandchildren.