The Beekeeper's Lament Read Online Free

his ideas are good ones. Sometimes they wreak havoc. He likes that, too.
    He loves spreadsheets—loves them. If he were a mortician, he would log all the pallbearers into a database—he is serious about this because, remember, he feels strongly about death, but also because he believes that “numbers matter.” He keeps detailed records for every bee yard—spreadsheets galore—and knows the exact bloom date for every type of plant his bees visit. He knows all his friends’ phone numbers by heart. He loves his friends. A few years ago, Miller bought an old grocery store in his North Dakota summer hometown and turned the space into Miller Honey’s False Hope Gym, stocking it with exercise equipment and leaving it open 24/7 for the locals to use, no fees required. He believes in lost causes.
    He is not patient. He often disappears without goodbyes. He rarely sits through a church service or a party or a beekeeping meeting without an abrupt and unexplained departure and return. He can be very, very peevish. He relishes saying things that make you cringe. He likes you to be complicit in his fun. Even un-fun things can sound fun when he describes them.
    Although he disapproves of dying, Miller doesn’t wear a seat belt. He once flipped a ten-wheeler on Interstate 80 in California, just west of the Riverside exit, a couple of days after Christmas. It was full of corn syrup meant to keep his bees alive until the almonds bloomed. A kid in “a hulk of an old Camaro” who had just repaired his brakes—or tried to—passed Miller’s truck. Just as Miller said to himself, “piece of junk,” the kid put on the brakes and nothing happened. He went thisaway and thataway across the freeway in front of Miller, and then the Camaro’s tires popped and the car came screaming crossways to hit Miller’s ten-wheeler behind the spindle on the front axle. The steering wheel spun out of Miller’s hands, the front axle went airborne, and when it landed the truck commenced an elegant 180, tipped over, and sheared the straps that held a thousand-gallon tank of syrup on the back. The tank rolled down the highway like a bowling ball and lodged against a guardrail. The steering column and shifting tower pushed past the dashboard into the spot where Miller would have been sitting had he been wearing a seat belt. Because he wasn’t, he was thrown to the floor between the seats as the cab crumpled to a space just large enough to fit a “fat, bald guy,” as he likes to describe himself—although he is not fat at all and not entirely bald yet.
    Miller sat there, in the hive-like cavity of his crumpled cab, contemplating the unfavorable aspect of things. The state troopers were not going to be happy with him. The highway department would have to shut the road and sand down the slick of corn syrup to prevent further carnage. Miller would have to replace a $45,000 truck and pay an extra $1,200 for enough corn syrup to get the bees through the month. It was winter, and there was nothing in bloom, and there wasn’t enough honey to keep his bees alive until the almonds came into flower. There were orchards to visit and hives to place and pollen patties to lay. He had a whole lot of bees to feed before he was to leave on a Caribbean cruise four days later, one of the very few vacations he and his family had taken in all his years as a professional beekeeper. So here is what this particular brush with destiny taught him: never, ever wear a seat belt.
    Y ET NO ONE SHOULD WEAR THEM MORE, BECAUSE AS A MIGRATORY beekeeper he is on the road more often than not. The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that there are probably 1,200 other roaming bee guys in the United States—like Larry Krause, Miller’s friend in Wyoming, and Dave Hackenberg, who first noticed the symptoms of CCD. It is a profession uniquely suited to the diversity of the American landscape, the bigness of American agriculture and industry, and the restlessness of the American