Last summer we had honey bees under our house. They were getting in near the ground through a crack where our back addition met the main building. I wasn’t sure if they were doing any harm, but I thought I didn’t really want them stinging my kids. So I piled gravel against the house as high as the crack went.
Right away I noticed that the workers were now thwarted. They buzzed around the former entrance, wondering where they should go. However, over the next day or two the bees underneath the house squished their way out underneath some of the house siding. They notified their friends of the new passageway and soon they were going about their business as usual.
Not to be outdone, I applied silicone to the cracks where they were going. Sure enough, they chewed their way through it and got through again. My final blow was a thick layer of toothpaste in every crack that looked like a possible entryway.
The workers were now effectively blocked, and I thought they would surely go off and take a vacation or something, but no—they tired themselves out looking for a new entrance, and eventually resigned themselves to sitting sentry-like on the side of the house in the hopes that their situation would change. There they died.
Something about those bees resonated with me. I admired their sense of duty, and felt kind of bad for them. It made me think about myself, and how much I enjoy my own work. I’m not sure what I would do if I didn’t have daily labour that was required of me. I would likely feel lost, like those bees. So many people live for the weekend, or their next vacation. Give me the right tools and a job I’m good at, and I will be quite content with that—hopefully not to a fault.