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Crossing The Red Sea

•Our best crop

•My brother Tom

•Coming out of the fire

•More than a truce

•the bears and the bees

•Billy Engelhardt

•Wherever we go

More than a truce

Ellwire bee yard, St. Lawrence County, northern New York State

May 11, 2001

The snakes are everywhere today.

Big fat snakes with little ones by their sides. Pairs of smaller snakes under most of the bee hives. I am finally getting used to them.

Ellwire is consistently one of our best bee yards, and I love to come to this sacred place. Many of the colonies have already made 30 pounds of honey. This is a classic upstate bee yard where the plants have grown through successive generations and molded around the hives for over 50 years. The bees overwinter well here. The snakes come with the land.

On many of the days that I work here, I see over 40 snakes. We are used to each other now. They lie in the sun, and I work around them. They stick their tongues out at me and bob their heads. When I pickup the wood they are lying on and nudge them along, they hiss at me and slither away.

I used to jump and scream every time I saw a snake here; I was scared of them. Then four years ago, we made an agreement. I would not hurt them, and they do not bite me. It is a universal contract that extends beyond this land. This understanding also covers times when I am with other people and some one wants to kill a snake. I protect my friends.

Mice destroy a lot of bee equipment each year; they make their homes in boxes that are in storage in the bee yards, eating the comb and the wood. I used to get mad at the mice, they were the last creatures I ever harmed. Now I leave them alone, moving them along into grass when I find them. Snakes will take care of all of this as they eat the mice. Without the snakes, the damage would be unimaginable.

The bees are letting me know that it is time to stop working with them. They are barometers of the weather, coming home before it rains and indicating that they do not want their homes taken apart any more. They stick their abdomens in the air and fan alarm pheromones my way. At 6:12 PM the first rain drops start to fall, and with the soft rain continuing for the next day, the drought is over. We will now get a honey crop at Ellwire.

The snakes at Ellwire are protected from the rain, coiled under most every bee hive. We have come to a peace on this land. It is truly more than a truce.

The brown flecks on the top of the wooden frames are propolis and beeswax.