I spent time in Maine recently, staying at my little cottage in a pasture a 25-minute drive inland from the mid-coast. One sunny afternoon my patient carpenter and I were working away at small tasks. He was cutting something on a table saw set up on sawhorses in the back yard. He is a quintessential Maine craftsman: taciturn and methodical. (He enjoys my exuberance but I have learned to temper it around him so as not to overwhelm him.) I took notice, then, when he bounded through the backdoor and called for me. “Susan! Come listen to this!”

I followed him outside and listened. The air was heavy with a low hum. “Do you hear that?” he asked. “Do you think it could be bees?” “I dunno,” I said, searching the sky, “I can’t see any.” “Maybe it’s just a truck up the hill in the blueberry fields,” he conceded. It did sound rather like a straining engine in a big truck. We stood and listened and watched. “There!” I cried, pointing at the neighbor’s big burgundy-leafed maple tree, “Bees, there, in front of the tree!”

We watched the air swirl with bees like a dust devil. And then they began moving in our direction. We looked at each other and at the same moment turned and sprinted back into the cottage. We stood inside at the window and watched. The bees came directly at the cottage and then turned and headed for some trees at the edge of the pasture. I Googled “Beekeepers, Union, Maine”, made a few calls and came up empty. I called the town office. “Do you know of any beekeepers in the area?” I asked. “I think I have a swarm.” “Well now,” said the town clerk, “I do believe a fella came by last week and left his card. Let me look for it. It’s here somewhere. If you could see my desk…” I waited. After a time she located the card, gave me a name and number, and I thanked her and hung up.

I dialed the beekeeper who lived a few towns away. I left a message and the carpenter and I returned to our work. The bees—if they were still around—were silent. The afternoon passed, the carpenter left for the day, and the sun began to sink in a bee-less sky. The phone rang. It was the beekeeper, wanting to know if the bees were still there. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t hear any humming. Let me go outside and see.” I walked to the edge of the pasture where the timothy was tall and lush with seed heads. I peered at the trees in the diminishing light. “Oh wow,” I said softly into the phone, “there’s a huge glob of them hanging from a branch of the spruce tree.” 

After several more phone calls during which the driving beekeeper got lost and I repeated the directions to my cottage, he arrived with his two sons. The boys clothed themselves in white and netted hats and waded into the pasture. They placed an open hive beneath the branch, shook the branch hard, the glob of bees fell in, and they placed the lid on top. They strapped the hive to a special carrier that looked sort of like a rickshaw and waded back to the truck. A 5-gallon bucket and the same technique captured the remaining bees on the branch, and a swath of pasture grass served as a lid to contain them. There were, said the beekeeper, about 6,000 little creatures in the swarm. The truck pulled away and my 6,000 temporary guests were on their way to their new home.

The next day a great storm blew in and rain fell not just in sheets but in thick solid quilts with no air space between the drops. I read a little about bees and learned that had they not been captured, the swarmed bees would have drowned.

Bees, as it turns out, are quite vulnerable without a home.

The research into how hives divide (with some bees and a new queen remaining in place and some bees and the old queen leaving to form a new hive) and relocate is fascinating. My summer reading is going to include the book “Bee Democracy” by Cornell University biology professor Thomas Seeley. The piece that intrigues me is the work of the scout bees, work that must have been happening the afternoon that the swarm formed in my spruce tree. Dozens of the oldest bees in the swarm are dispatched to go search for a potential new home. They fly in all directions and seek out and carefully inspect potential hive sites. If they find something of interest, they fly back to the swarm and communicate their find in detail by performing what’s called a “waggle dance”. The more excited the scout is about her find, the more intense and protracted the dance. Eventually, through a process that appears to be much like a political campaign, the swarm comes to consensus on one location and off they fly, trusting, following the winning scout to their new home, sight unseen.

During its long history, St John’s has established a couple new “hives”: St Ambrose in 1967 and St Mary Magdalene in 1981. [2] St Mary Magdalene went on to establish a hive of its own: St Brigid’s in Frederick. This is what healthy hives do, and it helps to ensure the survival of the species.

I think about the waggle dance of the bee as a kind of apian evangelism: you find something wonderful, you brim with enthusiasm for it, and you share that enthusiasm with others in your relationship circles. For the bee this enthusiasm is about a potential new home in the hollow trunk of a dead tree. For the Christian, such enthusiasm can regard a potential new spiritual home—a church. Not long ago after worship a family new to St John’s introduced me to another family they had invited to attend with them, a family from one of their social circles who had caught their enthusiasm about our church and was sufficiently curious to come and check us out. This happens more often than you’d think, and yet we haven’t been very intentional about encouraging it.

I’d like to bee more intentional (sorry, couldn’t resist that) and am wondering what you might think about St John’s hosting an Invite-a-Friend-or-Neighbor-to-Church Sunday. You’d supply the friend, neighbor or co-worker. You’d drive to church with them on this designated Sunday, or at least make arrangements to meet them at St John’s and sit together. We’d offer a teaching service—not overly didactic but with just enough pauses and explanation (both written and verbal) to put those not accustomed to a liturgical service at ease. We’d offer name tags, and special welcome bags, and a special coffee hour following.

Let me know if this idea appeals to you, if you’d be willing to help organize it, if you’d be willing to participate.

Bees are very intentional about ensuring the survival of their species and I think we Episcopalians could learn from them. We could learn to “waggle dance” a bit more courageously about our church and our faith. It’s an act of caring, really, because like bees human beings are quite vulnerable without a spiritual home. Jesus illustrated this point by speaking of sheep wandering without a flock and of himself as the shepherd gathering them together. Sheep or bees, it’s a question of survival, strength, and future vibrancy of our species, things that are best accomplished in community.

[1]http://www.utne.com/environment/how-bees-find-a-new-home http://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/honeybee-house-hunting

[2] The Centennial of a Sanctuary: 1903-2003 History of St John’s Church