Keeping In The Time of Colony Collapse – Rae Lamicq

The keepers mourned & the people asked what happens when the buzz is gone…where the apples, how the melons, can pickles be replaced? Everyone concerned wanted a conversation & talk is the opposite of observation. Consider the patience of a man seeking to understand the messages of bees, comprehend steps to their danced directions: this scent, that distance, sisters, remember.

Hexagons brimming, the workers flew their production.
What does it take to abandon such sweetness?
Do they sense death blooming within?

Oversaturated in new scents & poisons, a wing-weary worker dreamt of long ago tupelo, estranged orange trees from her first flight. She vanishes. The keepers extend hands to the confused queens, their lonely larvae,

hives heavy
with honey
but no hum.



Rae Lamicq is a writer, mother & educator who lives in Oregon. She has been a Youth Services Reference Assistant at both Cedar Mill Community Library & Beaverton City Library. She currently does on-call work at BCL. Her poems for this issue were inspired by a delightful text she read on all things apiary: A Short History of the Honey Bee: Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey by E. Readicker-Henderson. She checked it out from the library.

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