Aristotle And Bees
Ed Colby
My bee-hauling rig is a 1983 converted E350 Ford van. A former owner cut out the middle of this poor vehicle and welded the last couple of feet of the van shell onto the front, right behind the driver’s seat. Then this Rube Goldberg attached an 8 X 20-foot wood-decked flatbed behind that. So now it’s a flatbed truck with a compressed van for a cab.
It has an aftermarket four-wheel drive, with issues. If I bump the four-wheel-drive shifter lever a touch too far, it goes from four-wheel right past two-wheel, into neutral. Now the beast won’t move, and gears grind if I try to get back into two-wheel drive. I also can’t shut the engine off, because gears grind when I try to shift into park.
Solution to a truck with automatic transmission that won’t move, coupled with an engine that won’t stop running? Simple! Pop the hood and pull the distributor wire. Be careful not to get shocked! Of course the engine stops, and I can now coax the shifter lever into two-wheel drive.
Paul found this mechanical marvel somewhere out in Utah decades ago. I bought it for $2,300 in 2004, when I ran bees for Jack Holzberlein, out of Meeker, Colorado.
My truck hauls 30 colonies with ease. A practically new battery-powered lift mounted on the receiver hitch takes the struggle out of loading bees. The lift is worth its weight in gold. This 74-year-old no longer needs to hand-truck hives up a ramp, onto the flatbed.
Under the hood, a 1976 rebuilt 460 engine with only 60,000 miles purrs at 65.
Most peculiar truck you ever laid eyes on, and not exactly pretty, but it works for me. I put fewer than 1,000 miles a year on this relic, but driving it down the road at dawn with a load of bees is my idea of waking up in Heaven.
I’m kind of a rebuilt 460 engine myself, trying to stay in the game, against all odds. Like my ancient truck, I do require continual maintenance. I suppose I could retire, but what would be the point of living without bees?
Back in my Aspen Mountain ski patrol days, I rode the gondola with ski legend Klaus Obermeyer, then deep into his nineties. He still turned ‘em left and right. “Klaus,” I said, “What’s your old-man secret to health and vigor?”
He smiled and did not hesitate. “Never stop doing what you love to do.” he proclaimed.
It’s early June as I write. Yesterday I got up before the robins, to load bees bound for two new yards, on open-space land owned by Pitkin County, up towards Aspen. The deal almost fell through over liability insurance concerns, but once the county got the message that I wasn’t buying any more insurance, they began to see things my way. For some reason, they really wanted bees on these properties.
The two yards are only a mile or two apart. I’m downsizing, but when the county offered me these locations, I was intrigued. I already take care of my billionaire’s bees just down the road, and they do pretty well. I thought I’d split 10 hives between two yards and see what happens.
My apprentice Megan likes to learn, and she offered to meet me at my second bee drop-off first thing in the morning. I say “apprentice.” That’s not really the right word. She doesn’t want to become a stressed-out sideliner like me. But Megan does have the bee bug. She’s obsessed, that’s all. And obsession is the most critical requirement for becoming a successful beekeeper.
I dropped off four colonies at the first location. The yard seemed a little too close to a road and a bike path, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this before. I unloaded the six remaining hives at the second location, where I already had a bear fence in place. Megan hooked up the solar panel, battery and electrical charger for the fence. She’s handy and requires very little supervision.
By the time I got back to the first yard, it was mid-day. The road and the bike path were alive with bicyclists, dogs, runners, walkers and gawkers. Like people, bees can get cranky. These colonies sat only 40 feet from the road. My gut told me this was all wrong.
The forecast high was 95 degrees. There was already a bear fence here, from a previous beekeeper, but it was a mess. I was short on sleep. Megan was long gone. My post pounder was too hot to pick up without gloves. I looked at my bees, at the parade of passing humanity, at the steel posts and woven-wire bear fence I still had to erect. All this for four hives too close to the road? I’d clearly blundered, but I’d given my word.
I reflected on the teacher Aristotle, for whom all decisions were grounded in ethics. What would he have done, facing such a dilemma?
Just as I felt I was about to succumb to heatstroke, I had an epiphany. I drove home and slept the rest of the afternoon. At sundown I came back, picked up my little darlings, and brought ‘em home.
