At times we can find ourselves in conflict with someone at work, within a friendship, or in our family.
Which raises the question, what do we do then?
In Wintering, Katherine May describes how a beekeeper solves such a problem. As you read her description, I invite you to consider how a “sheet of newspaper” might offer a metaphor for how to approach the next conflict that arises in your life.
“I was heading for a row of beehives,” writes May. “All summer, I’d enjoyed listening to their hum and watching the industrious commotion around them. But that day I noticed something slightly different. Bisecting the hive was a sheet of newspaper, dividing the top half from the bottom…. I was curious… what could a sheet of newsprint do for a colony of bees?
When I asked on Twitter, it appeared that everyone knew the answer except me.
The keeper was combining two hives, salvaging the stronger bees from a weak colony whose queen was beginning to fail, which might not otherwise survive the winter. The paper wall allows these bees to join another queen without causing the kind of fighting that could damage both colonies.
The procedure works like this:
The beekeeper stacks a weakening colony on top of a strong one, with the paper in between. The bees smell one another and set about chewing through the paper, but by the time they finish the task, the weaker bees will have picked up the scent of their new queen and lost interest in fighting
By the time the beekeeper opens the hive again, nothing is left of the newspaper except for a ring where the two hive boxes meet, and the two groups of bees will be living together in harmony.”
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