swarm doesn’t travel far from its original hive; they typically settle in a nearby tree or bush, and cluster there for a few hours or days until they make a group decision where to permanently nest. While hanging together, the swarm casts out hundreds of scout bees to house-hunt and come back to the group with options. Just like a forager dances on the honeycomb inside a hive to advertise flower patches, the scouts dance on top of the bee cluster to pass along the addresses of hollow trees, rock crevices or sometimes dry cavities within the walls of wood-frame houses as potential dwelling places.
Like people touring a list of open houses, the bees gather a list of addresses from various dancing scouts and go inspect their options. They fly into the advertised locations, taking measurements, checking the security of the entrance and feeling for drafts. They make their decision and return to the hive to dance with the scout whose home they prefer. As the energy and excitement builds, one scout reaches a tipping point of support, a consensus is reached and the entire swarm takes off with the queen to that scout’s specific location.
The more I learned about bees, the more astounded I became with their social intelligence. Not only did bees have language, they were democratic. They researched, shared information, discussed options and made collective decisions, all for the betterment of the whole.
“You’re right,” I said.
“About what?”
“Bees are smart.”
“You already knew that,” he said.
“I didn’t know they thought about the future.”
Nothing about a bee colony was spontaneous; bees could see a problem coming and start making a change before it became serious and they perished. If their hive became overcrowded or unsafe, they took initiative to move to someplace better, abandoning a home that is too drafty or damp, too low to the ground where predators can get it, or too small for their growing family. Bees had enough brainpower to envision a better life, and then go out and get it. Even if it involved the risk of living out in the open, defenseless, until they decided together where to relocate. Bees had guts.
“What about you?” he asked.
Grandpa continued lifting frames one at a time out of the hive, examining both sides for eggs and larvae, and sliding them back in the box.
“What about me?”
“What do you see in your future?”
It felt like a trick question. “High school graduation,” I said, which was three years away.
Grandpa put his hive tool into his back pocket, led me a short distance from the hives and untied my bee veil. He tilted it off my head so he could look into my eyes. I could tell something was heavy on his mind.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “Have you thought about what you want to be someday?”
I realized with a sudden panic that I hadn’t given it any thought. Grandpa was encouraging me to take a cue from the scout bees, and start planning now for my future. My grandparents’ home was never intended to be more than a temporary stopgap, even though it had now been almost a decade. I couldn’t live with him forever. And I could not live with Mom, ever. I was dangerously without a plan.
Grandpa was trying to tell me that I had to go out and find what I wanted, and then dance like hell for it.
“I’ll go to college?” I offered.
“Now you’re thinking,” he said.
After our hive talk, I threw myself into high school. Every test, every essay, every science experiment was a chance to get a good grade, and the more A’s I collected, the better the odds that a college would offer me a scholarship. I cared less about which school accepted me or even what I studied; I saw college more as a way to escape my living situation. The mere threat of spending the rest of my life on Via Contenta made me evangelical about homework.
I became a champion studier, turning in my book reports early to leave a good impression on my teachers. When I told Granny that colleges liked students with a lot of extracurricular activities, she posed as me and wrote a letter to the Carmel Pinecone offering to write a youth column for free. Not surprisingly, I got the job. Every two weeks I typed a story on Granny’s typewriter about high school events, she edited and fact-checked, and then I delivered the pages by hand to the editor in Carmel. A school