Calling the bees

To my father, Bernardino.
This is the true story of how he taught me to call the bees.


"Heaven is love. Hell is love. What matters is how you make your journey there." - Balinese wisdom

Dear fellow explorers,

Birds are returning to Gandhi's Gardens. The breeze has changed, the scent and aromas in the air have changed. The light hours have changed. The paths that the trees' shadows follow under the sunlight have changed. They are now closer to their trunks, warmer, kinder, sweeter, like the words exhaled by a new lover. And... the trees have awakened!

But it's not only the birds and the trees. Also the bees, there are very few flowers yet in the gardens, but a handful of industrious city bees are skipping from blossom to blossom, in their joyful spring collection. I am sitting at a bench far from Gandhi, in the sunny side, near the bushes and observing the flight of my buzzy little friends. An intense memory floods my brain as I start remembering, inundating it with a different light...

I was 17 or 18, an insecure adolescent, living in a mid-sized town on the island called Tenerife, just off the Northwest coast of Africa. My dad, Bernardino, had been a farmer all his life, even after he had an accident that almost paralysed him from waist down. Fortunately, that didn't happen, and although he walks on crutches since then, life found a way to continue flowing: about four years after that accident he and my mother managed to conceive me, and three years later, they also conceived my little sister, Inma. Many times I wonder what would have happened if the accident had been any worse... I wouldn't be here... these sentences would have never been written... but that's part of another story.

So I was part of a very big, humble, hard-working family of farmers, I had to work in the field, study, learn to clean and cook to help in the house too. There wasn't much time to get bored. Very often, we would plant, water, tend or harvest one of our main crops: potatoes or papas, as they are known in the Canary Islands. As a little aside, I must inform you: you can't say you have eaten potatoes until you have tried some of the 40 plus varieties from the islands, especially the papas bonitas, meaning "pretty potatoes". But what matters to the fact I'm telling is that we were harvesting potatoes in one of the high terraced fields my father inherited from his family, not a big field, but very fertile, made with volcanic soil. My dad who was about 60 then, and another-middle aged man friend of his were digging the potatoes with the azadas -hoes- and I and a middle-aged neighbour lady were collecting them into buckets. She'd grab the big ones first and then I, after her, the medium and damaged ones, in the traditional way,  and when full, emptying the buckets into sacks. We had harvested about 3 quarters of the terrace we were in when the neighbour heard a strange noise and she said:
-Ay, escucha.... (Oh, listen...)
We all turned towards the cascading terraces, if you looked far away you could see the whole Orotava Valley and the Atlantic Ocean as deep blue as always, but soon our view was blocked and the sound grew louder and louder, like a rumbling storm but different, menacing like a sting in your ear. In one second, a black, hectic, buzzing cloud hung over our heads, overwhelming our senses. We started to panic, but there was no time.  My dad, very fast to assess the situation, shouted:
-It's wild bees, throw soil at them! Rapido!
-Queeeee?-I shouted back.
-Do as I say, throw soil at them! Nooooow!
Not believing my ears or my eyes, I started grabbing big handfuls of soil in my bare hands and throwing it at the raging cloud of insects. So did the other two and my dad. Instead of flying away, the swarm became confused and began to fly lower, closer and closer to our heads. I was very afraid, my heart beating like a frenzied African drum. And the swarm started to slowly drift going towards the lower terraces that my dad owned. I was starting to feel relieved when Bernardino again shouted at me:
-Go after them, grab an empty bucket and beat it with a stick!
-Queeeee?-I shouted back. Great, not only was I in danger now but also witnessing my dad losing his wits. I knew  he was getting older but this had to be a really bad practical joke. I did not move a single inch.
-Grab a bucket now, and beat it with a stick, go under the swarm, otherwise they will escape!
Wait a second, we want them to go away, don't we?... my mind was protesting, however, after many years of obeying my father, I knew not to contradict him, so I abandoned my self-preservation instincts and my logical ideas and allowed my body to become the puppet of his orders, since he was on crutches and could not go after the bees himself. I went against all my accumulated wisdom in 17 years and believed him.

There I was, an insecure teenager, chasing a wild swarm of bees with a stick and an empty bucket as my sword and shield, running through the terraces, jumping over the vines, listening to my father's frantic shouts
-Beat the bucket, with rhythm! Beat the bucket, go under them! Don't stop!- and somehow, the most improbable, ridiculous thing happened. It began to work. The louder and more regularly I beat the bucket, the slower the bees would fly and the more they calmed down-Muy bien, keep beating it!- and as I did, I realised I was not beating a bucket... I was asking the bees to dance to the beat of my drum; I was calling the bees to accept me as a fellow living creature who wanted to commune with them and be with them. And there I stood, in the middle of an open field, playing the base line of a sweet isa canaria, while my fellow creatures the bees, started to descend upon me in smaller and sweeter circles, accepting my invitation.-Muy bien, don't stop!- And I didn't and they descendend over me and over the vines in that field and the queen landed on a ripe bunch of grapes of her liking and so did her citizens. Some of them touched me, curious, maybe caressing me, enjoying the dance, I felt fine, and only received one sting, since a nosey dance partner tried to go down my neck and I attempted to swat her. I was not ready for such close acquaintance yet.

I was calling the bees and they had accepted my call with a polite bow and a smile.

But I had no time to savour the moment.My dad shouted the next instruction as he was walking towards the field -Go find Ramon, our cousin, and explain to him we have caught a swarm of wild bees. Ask him to bring a wooden container to form a beehive and the smoke maker.-My heart was still pumping to the rhythm of the dance with the bees, my whole body in heaven with the adrenalin flowing through my veins, my feet stepping light as if they had wings of their own- I wonder what our cousin Ramon thought when he saw me...is this the same boy I know, he looks pale and... happy?

Fifteen minutes later, Ramon, wearing a fine mesh hat and long gloves, had gathered dry cow dung and was burning it inside the smoke maker and then spreading the smoke around the vine where the dance-happy queen and courtisans were resting. They were about to get a new home. Our skilled beekeeper had smeared the inside of the wooden container -which was about 1.20 meter tall, 40 cms. wide and 40 cms. deep- with the best honey available,and next, as the bees had already been dazed by the smoke, with the utmost respect, he grabbed with his own hands the bulk of the swarm, including her majesty, and moved it slowly into the box, to the darker zone with interlaced sticks, destined to become the core of the beehive.


Heaven is love. Hell is love. What matters is how you make your journey there.

I was calling the bees and they accepted my call with a polite bow and a smile.