To bee or not to bee

Jack Deatherage

"Whatever you think retirement is, it isn't."
     - DW's Da, Glenn Smith, at age 70.

(9/2024) My dad crapped out at age 56, before he could retire. Mom's brothers reached retirement age and one by one began the long, miserable slide into whatever is next via various medical issues. Several of my cousins, all of them working better paying jobs than I was capable of, having planned their retirements and saved diligently, crashed and burned before ever enjoying the fruits of their labors. Idiot though I am, my expectations of retirement were long ago set in stone. I'd drop dead around age 60 doing some task in the DW and her aunt's novelty leather goods factory.

Yeah, that didn't happen. When I walked into the Liberty Mfg. Co. building on Creamery Road in 1973, I didn't want to work in a factory. I was hired anyhow. I remember Leonard Dow, (factory supervisor) telling me, "You won't make any money working here, but you will learn enough to get a good job in a shoe factory."

I still laugh 51 years later! Long before I'd learned enough, the shoe factories in Emmitsburg, Fairfield, Dillsburg, East Berlin and Hanover were gone! I helped gut large factories in Gettysburg and Reading.

Retirement? Hell, work was not what I thought it would be! The last three months the family business was still "open" we worked for no pay as we struggled to clear the factory's debts before the DW finally stuck a fork in what was left of the business and called it done.

Done? Now what? The factories were gone. I was evidently "too old" for the several dishwasher jobs I applied for. The DW's most marketable skill was bookkeeping, on paper, with a pencil- computers totally baffle her. Would we sit in front of a TV as the DW's parents had done until they went into a nursing home? (I still shudder at the thought of ending up like that!)

After wending my way through various hobbies, most of which we couldn't afford to fund, I finally settled on two interests that have drawn me moth like to the flame- learning and gardening. As much as I hated/hate school, I enjoy learning! Sadly I don't retain much, but that's what books are for! Now I have time to ransack public libraries for books on any topic that catches my flittering attention.

Native bees are currently one of the garden topics I've begun digging into. Fortunately for me, I don't care about identifying any of the estimated 30,000 species of bees that live around this rock. Just learning to pronounce their scientific names would take me another lifetime. I mean- Eulonchopia punctatissima, a bee living, or not, in the southwestern states and Mexico? Pfft. I struggle with pronouncing my last name!

I'm more interested in Emmitsburg's population of mason, leaf-cutter and ground dwelling bees that have shown up in the community garden in numbers that beat the vaunted European honeybee by at least 5 to 1. Native bees are said to pollinate 95% of the flowers they visit compared to the 5% the honeybees manage.

Beyond being better pollinators Native bees tend to be less aggressive as they aren't defending hives filling with honey. They seldom pay attention to us as we tramp through the melon patch or wade among the pumpkins growing in bags. Equally important to me is the ease with which we can work some of the nearly 400 species of Maryland's native bees into a STEM program for the children's librarians while ensuring next year's crop of delectable melons are well pollinated.

The current plan is to set up "bee houses" around the garden next year and provide watering and mud holes for the mason bees which are the most likely species working the garden. Of the mason bees, Osmia lignaria, blue orchard bee (BOB) is the easiest to accommodate as far as bee housing is concerned. There are several commercially available "houses" on the market and do-it-your-own-self plans are simple enough if one has the wood, tools and minimal wood working skills. Having none of those I call on the Stoneman.

Knowing slightly more about native bees than I know about wood crafting I have to get Stoneman up to speed to get him onboard with making bee houses. Once he understood the purpose he points out the fact that mason bees will use most any available hole they can squeeze into. The "ground" holes in every electric receptacle in his mom's garage have mud seals. Even the recessed bolt holes on her lawn equipment are sealed with mud. Which reminds me of the first mason bee I noticed several years ago filling the hollow of an old fly fishing rod abandoned on the kitchen door stoop.

Obviously we don't have to be as precise in building bee houses if we're attracting every species of mason bee in the area. However, housing BOB is a different business, literally. People are collecting the pupae from BOB houses, overwintering them in cold storage and selling them to orchards, large and small, for release during bloom time. There are commercially available BOB houses specifically designed for harvesting the pupae. We're not currently interested in those.

More useful for the library's STEM program would be a bee house with a viewing window that could allow the kids attending the program to watch the nest building from start to finish. Such a house would be a better use of the Stoneman's craft as well. Convincing the DW to spend money on this new project shouldn't be too difficult. We need the bees to pollinate the cantaloupes she enjoys from the community garden. Maybe a title for the DW would help get her onboard? Saint DW, patron of Emmitsburg's native bees? She's already the patron saint of the rare gray bearded, balding, potbellied, six-eyed macaques, of which there is only one that we know of. I see no reason she can't be a saint twice over.

Hmm... I'd like to make her the patron saint of Emmitsburg's melon patch while I'm at it. Doubling the current garden would accommodate the few people who have talked to me about joining the community garden next year and provide us with enough room to grow melons for the farmers market. Growing and selling melons is a program I'll pitch to the librarians. I think the kids who currently attend the library's STEM program can handle growing melons. I'm sure they'd enjoy eating the melons. Sticking a few dollars in their pockets after selling melons might also get them interested in expanding into general market gardening.

Yep. Retirement isn't what I thought it would be. So far, it's been better than I deserve as "learning" and "gardening" opportunities expand before me until mind and/or body gives out.

Sadly, it's only September and I've all of Autumn and Winter to change my mind about my role in the community garden a dozen or more times before ever the first seed sprouts in the Spring. Poor DW. She really does deserve sainthood, or free room and board in a mental ward other than our madhouse.