Until recently, I kept honeybees. But two years in a row, I lost them. Both hives. The first year, when I did my early spring inspection, I saw that there weren’t enough bees to call a proper hive, so I got some extra bees, about 20,000. They come by the pound, and I bought 3 pounds per hive. So as you can see, that can only be an approximate count. I had harvested honey the year before and the bees had gone into the winter appearing healthy and happy. It’s normal for many of the bees to die out over winter, but I had lost too many. And the second year was worse. Even though I had bolstered the hives with new bees, they didn’t do well.
I don’t really live in an ideal location to keep bees. My lot is small. There’s an apartment building to the west, and giant trees to the south. It’s on a steep hill. The only place I had to put them was on a seldom-used and hard-to-access second story balcony. The day I first installed them, they freaked out and all went and landed on the second story windows of the apartment next door. The neighbors were afraid to come outside. Later, another neighbor complained that the bees had taken over her hot tub and were constantly in need of rescue, but none too happy to be rescued, so it was not a win-win situation. Eventually everyone calmed down and we all got used to living next to each other, but now that they are gone, I think everyone but me and my no-longer-there bees is happier.
The point of this little story is this. I loved my bees. I tried so hard to take care of them. When they didn’t make it through the winter the second year in a row, it felt like a huge failure. It felt like I had failed them specifically. And for now, my heart is broken. I will have to make a decision in a few months whether to get more bees. And whether to completely destroy all my equipment and start over - probably the best option - but it’s thousands of dollars and I’d have to build the boxes and paint them and the thought of doing all that is hard to face. The first time I did it, I had high hopes. I knew bee populations were struggling and I wanted to be a little part of the solution. I learned that it’s pretty common to lose 30% of your hives a year, but I thought faith, love and dedication would win over the odds. When they didn’t, it was hard to accept.
I am all about perseverance if you’re a pointed in the right direction, but one of the things I’ve learned about succeeding in life, is to go with your skills and your location. And if the skill or the location is lacking, decide whether it’s still what you want. In my case, I lacked a deep skill handling the bees and lacked a good location. I could have made up for those detriments if I wanted to, but wasn’t sure I was ready so soon after losing them. Don’t continue to pursue something if your heart isn’t in it. Whether for a short time or forever, you have to wait until you have the heart and passion to persevere. If you don’t give yourself the time to heal, to think about whether you truly want to try the same thing again or want to move on, you can push yourself into doing something that no longer serves. That might feel like the upstanding thing to do, but it likely won’t succeed, and you’ll exhaust yourself trying to make it succeed. That serves no one, least of all you, and keeps you from doing the next great thing you are supposed to be doing.
When you have a big idea and it bombs and you have to decide whether to try again, there can be a lot of internal or perceived external pressure to do it. It was such a cool idea. For example, saying that I kept bees had a cool factor. I felt a little righteous and special (which is total bullshit by the way – just an ego thing – more on that some other time). I felt noble. It’s nice to feel noble once in a while, but then I failed in my gallant quest to save my bees and I felt like a schmuck.
I still admire people who keep bees, even more now than I did before, because I know it’s hard and sometimes heartbreaking. I may never keep bees again, but I will never regret that I did. I learned (again) about my own capacity for love.
