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By: Stephen Bishop
Richard seemed like a nice enough guy, not real talkative, just your typical poultry farmer slaving away to pay off his new poultry houses, but he held a deep dark secret. One of his old defunct poultry houses was stuffed full of organs. Big organs, little organs, dismembered organs — there was an organ for everybody, no matter your musical taste.
“That’s a lot of pianos,” I said.
“Organs,” he corrected, as we maneuvered through the dimly lit and elongated structure that once held thousands of floor birds. The floor was now a makeshift labyrinth.
“How many organs do you have?” I asked
“Well, over a hundred,” he said. “Been picking them up from churches. A lot of them have gone contemporary — guitars and drums and stuff — and some can’t find anybody who knows how to play them anymore. Sometimes they just give them to me for free, just to take them off their hands.” Richard reached down with one hand and caressed some ivory keys.
“My mother was an organist,” he said, “so that is how I learned.”
My mind lingered on the word was. I have seen Psycho. I know what happens sometimes when maladjusted nice guys form unhealthy dependencies on their moms. I’m not saying Richard was maladjusted, but he was a nice guy. Every so often he would pause to enlighten me on a make and model: “This is Rodgers, Model-34E, built in 1961 — it was the first organ to have a transistorized amplifier.” Over the years, I’ve had many farmers similarly summarize the key features of a make and model, usually in regards to some antiquated tractor. Never had I met a farmer with such an unusual collection.
After much weaving and winding, we finally emerged on the far end of the old poultry house, where the maze of organs opened up on a little clearing in the collection. Richard had a mammoth organ, like something you might see in Dracula’s castle, set up against the far wall of the poultry house. It had four cascading rows of keys, like the bottom jaw of a giant shark. Above the keyboards was an ornate wooden box containing the organ innards and above that were the organ pipes. They tapered, like a bell curve, from small pipes on the ends to a taller and larger central pipe in the middle.
“Here she is,” he said. “She’s a beaut’ if I do say so myself. It took me two years to rebuild her, but I’m proud to say I got her back to life.”
I smiled nervously. Sure enough, Richard was just talking about the organ.
“The bees are in that biggest organ pipe, right there in the middle. I first noticed them about a week ago.” Guard bees were patrolling the top of the pipe, as a steady line of workers brought in pollen.
“Been meaning to fix that piece of tin for a long time,” said Richard, pointing to the spot where the bees were entering the poultry house, “but can’t do it now with the bees in the pipe — think you can get them out?”
“I can try,” I said. It was actually the easiest trap out I’ve ever done, likely because the swarm had only been there for about a week so they had yet to create an elaborate nest and expand their numbers. I set up a mesh funnel on the top of the pipe and puffed smoke heavily into the bottom. I was able to secure a cardboard nuc box on the top of an adjacent pipe and I baited it with an artificial queen pheromone lure. The bees poured out of the pipe, through the hole in the end of the screened funnel. Richard added to the alacrity of their evacuation by powering up the organ and showing me how to play a low C note.
“Ddddroooommmm!!!”
“Ddddroooommmm!!!”
“Ddddroooommmm!!!”
“Ddddroooommmm!!!”
The bees redoubled the efforts to exit the pipe.
“It may a take a few days to get the stragglers out,” I said. “This is the strangest place I’ve ever found bees. To be honest, I was a bit worried you might be a little psycho when I first walked in here. I’ve never met a man with a hundred organs.”
“Same here,” he chuckled, “I’ve never met a man with a hundred hives.”
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