A few years ago I invited a local beekeeper to place a hive on my farm. I naively assumed a honey bee colony would increase pollination and thus help maximize crop production. On a preliminary visit he stopped near a mist of insects hovering around a patch of blooming blackberry briars. “You’re getting plenty of pollination,” he said, amazed, “Look at all these wild bees,” pointing to the tiny black insects that, at first glance, appeared to be small flies or large gnats. This was my introduction to the subtle but vital work of native wild bees.
The familiar honey bee is an imported European insect brought by colonists. All bees, broadly defined, are wild; i.e. the honey bee is not “tame,” only managed. But the term “wild” is so frequently applied exclusively to native North American bees that the terms are interchangeable. Honey bees (non-natives) that swarm and build independent, unmanaged colonies in hollow trees are sometimes referred to as wild bees, but more properly should be known as feral bees. Bumblebees are natives, but differ in many ways from most indigenous species.

Ignored no more
Because most native bees produce an insignificant amount of honey, early settlers had no incentive to propagate and manage these species. Imported bees, on the other hand, offered both honey and pollination. This double benefit, coupled with the fact that most native bees are much less visible and less likely to inflict painful stings, meant that wild bees quite literally dropped out of sight, though they have never disappeared entirely. But as agriculture became mechanized and supersized, and wilderness became urbanized, native bees declined because they lost habitat to monocultures and pavement. When crop production suffered, farmers turned to honey bees. Portable honey bees do their work while crops bloom, and then they are moved out of danger before pesticides are applied. Unfortunately, lingering wild bee populations have been decimated by large-scale pesticide applications. Honey bees have been having their own problems in recent years, with mite infestations and disease reducing their numbers to the point that crop production could be seriously reduced as a result. Consequently, farmers are looking for help from what has been here all along- native bees.
Close to 4,000 species of native bees live in North America, and many have never been studied comprehensively, so any description of their habits must be general and qualified. Nevertheless, they share many traits. The orchard mason bee, Osmia lignaria, (aka blue orchard bee) is a native species widespread in the east; and it exemplifies many characteristics of wild bees. The mason and other wild bees produce no excess honey or beeswax, and most do not live in colonies; though individuals do nest very close to one another, as people in an apartment building. Their life cycle is short and simple. After mating in the spring, a female builds nests in almost any protected nook, such as hollow weed stems, snail shells, and human-constructed nest boxes. She shapes a cell using mud and other materials; collects nectar, and after mixing her honey with pollen, deposits the “bee bread” in the cell. She lays an egg near this food supply, and seals the cell shut. Each female constructs a series of these cells and dies shortly thereafter. After hatching within the cell, the larvae feeds on the bee bread, spins a cocoon, and matures into an adult; but remains in the cell over the winter.

Perfect timing
The short lifespan of wild bees would seem to be impractical to farmers, but the timing of certain species is perfect for various crops, and their lengthy maturation period inside the self-contained cells makes them easy to manage. The blue mason bee, for example, is managed commercially for orchard pollination, and probably is the most well-known wild bee. Native bees match or exceed honey bees in their ability to pollinate crops. Natives forage shorter distances and thus remain near the targeted crop. Wild bees go to work early in the spring before honey bee numbers increase, and they are active at lower temperatures. The fact that many wild bees are inefficient at gathering pollen counter-intuitively makes them more efficient crop pollinators because they must visit flowers more frequently. They gather both pollen and nectar in a single flower visit (honey bees don’t always do both), and the natives’ vigorous motions, as well as distinctive anatomical features, help spread pollen where it is needed.
No one suggests that native bees will or should displace honey bees. After all, who wants to give up that delicious honey? The two bee types can easily coexist, and one study even shows that the presence of wild bees stokes honey bees into being more active and thus more efficient pollinators themselves. In short, we can literally reap the benefits of both bee types with just a little more recognition and care for the ones that pollinated the first crops at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

Lockjaw by Holly Farris
Gival Press, Arlington, VA

The language is fresh, the stories stimulating. Holly Farris’s first short story collection, Lockjaw, offers poignant glimpses into the interior lives of an array of diverse characters that linger in the reader’s mind. Her Appalachian narrators, though deeply rooted in Southwest Virginia, exhibit characteristics universally human. As they grapple with life’s challenges in ways not always successful, they struggle to understand their place in this world, whether on their own or in relation to others. Farris deftly displays the angst bubbling just below the surface of her characters, an act that leaves the reader often times uncomfortable and confronting his or her own insecurities or metaphysical challenges. In fact, the characters invite the reader to embark on a probing journey in fiction that mirrors the fullness of life.
Farris divides the stories into three sections: Youth, Maturity, Old Age. In each section readers encounter a different narrator of varying sex, sexual orientation, race, education level, socio-economic status, and age. The opening story, “Bloom”, however, is written by an omniscient narrator who employs flower metaphors to illustrate the colorful characters to follow in the subsequent chapters. From the start Farris demonstrates her creative word play as the speaker asserts, “When you awaken in early spring, watch for wayward flowers. Around ruined country chimneys, clay stripes like new cuts. Soil stigmata weep. Daffodil heads ruffle and nod; purple iris leapfrog across pocked fields. Tulips riot, calico, in midday sun. Flowers either mutiny or they march fencerows. Words typically used as nouns rouse the reader’s attention as verbs. Common verbs paired with uncommon nouns provide new ways of seeing and understanding the seemingly mundane. Readers grow alert to expect the unexpected.
While most of the stories stretch several pages, some punctuate the collection with a single page, a brevity that belies their impact. “Trace Erase” is one such story composed of two short paragraphs and two cryptic, albeit poignant, concluding lines. Without any idea of whether the speaker is male or female, readers only know that the “I” of the paragraphs is employed to “scrub the stain of dying at home out of houses.” As the narrator finishes the day’s work, “a suicide, not murder,” a group of porcelain dogs perched atop a dust-laden shelf interrupts. The inanimate come to life in this house where life was lost, taken. As the Trace Erase employee struggles to comprehend his or her own role in the morbidity of such sanitation work, he/she imagines a confused query from the dogs and registers their “disappointment at what they saw …” The employee’s response is brief. “It’s simple for you I say when I stand up to leave. People don’t always stay in sets.” Though the setting is different and the circumstances quite distinct, readers are reminded of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where the lovers are locked in eternity, on the verge of an intimate kiss that will never be consummated. Yet, the lovers remain beautiful and young, full of anticipation, forever defying the ravages of time. So, too, the dogs, “puppies leashed with fine gold chains” remain together throughout eternity, in a set, impervious to death.
The title story of the collection, which falls in the “Maturity” section, is indeed about a character, Brenda, who miraculously recovers from lockjaw, another name for tetanus. But the narrator, Janelle, is a young high school dropout who’s pregnant from a one-day fling with a tenth-grade boy trying to dodge boredom. As the two girls work Shuff’s roadside store during the stifling heat of a 1960’s summer, Janelle envies Brenda’s luck and resents her own state of affairs, noting, “Options. It’s what Brenda had and I didn’t.” As Brenda recounts her tale of stepping on a nail and acquiring the dreaded lockjaw disease, Janelle follows along but inserts her own unspoken but predictable story in Brenda’s pauses. “‘I had it all,’ [Brenda] said and somehow I counted the chances we’d both inherited but I had given away. I thought of her at Fort Bragg and me tending the counter to buy diapers.” Janelle laments her past and begrudges the baby growing inside her while Brenda readies herself for Army basic training and the opportunities to follow.
As Brenda concludes her story, however, she confesses, “‘Never since could I stand anyone near me…” At this revelation Janelle begins to feel sorry for Brenda and realizes, “I felt she needed me, needed someone, so she could spit out how it was to be so alone and then feel her way back.” Pulling herself out of her own self-pity, Janelle reaches out to Brenda—with an orange Popsicle, the kind that splits down the middle and can be shared. Yet Brenda conjures up the waning memories of her lockjaw when looking at the Popsicle stick. She instructs Janelle, “‘Eat it down to the stick, the part that’d be mine, and my teeth touch that mealy frozen wood. That’s lockjaw, teeth points clamping, on edge, wanting to bite in, nibble something good, but me not knowing how to stop if I did’.” Unexpectedly, and for the first and only time, Brenda acknowledges the baby growing inside Janelle, the baby that Janelle slowly comes to accept during this strange exchange. Janelle notes, “At least, it struck me that I had someone from then and always, this baby.”
Yearning for a human connection, lonely in her aloneness, Brenda takes the Popsicle leg and traces the outline of Janelle’s neck, back, shoulders, and belly with the frozen tip, offering her a small, cool respite from the oppressive heat. Thus, a temporary bond is formed, the healing continued, for Janelle reveals, “Circles and circles she drew, the paper envelope catching what sweet melted until its little leg twisted, leaving me sure there’s no feeling better than returning from alone.” The girls connect in a most intimate way as each continues to heal from both old and new wounds. Both girls survive and undergo miraculous recoveries—together.
In the concluding “Old Age” section, readers encounter characters aging, dying, or already dead. They also meet characters left to sort through the emotions of dealing with such end-of-life matters. Farris comes full circle in her writing. The life cycle is complete. In “Bringing up the Dead,” readers are transported to an earlier time in Appalachia’s labor history, the time when mules were replaced with motors in the coalmines. From the opening line the narrator, Anthony, explains his appreciation for the mules, animals his Boss calls “beasts of burden.” “Mules are more honest than any man. I’ve treated them accordingly, all the years I’ve managed a string in this underground mine.” Not only have the mules faithfully hauled coal from the mountain’s belly, Anthony recalls their role in bringing out “recent mashed boys to a car waiting at the switch on the tracks.” Hence, Farris’s title, at face value, reports the mules’ “bringing up the dead” from roof falls and explosions. And Anthony cannot see it any other way as he comments, “For me, blood’s always worthy of blood. Forget the motors. The mule pulls the sled, the mashed boy’s blood pumps out.”
Yet, the title reflects another type of surfacing of the dead. Anthony tragically demonstrates the truth of his opening line when he lies to a young jack mule, attempting to calm the animal as he leads him out of the mine. “Job for you, I whisper into the jack’s velvet ear.” Because the mules are bred and born in the mines, they never see the light of day, and consequently, grow blind with age. Covering the young mule’s eyes with his own bandanna to shield the beast from the sun’s painful rays, Anthony hands him off to two men he’s never seen before. Turning away from his companion, Anthony notes, “He walks flat-footed between them to the gate, to his first springtime smells and fresh grass.” The jack does not even have an opportunity to nibble at this new discovery, however. While Anthony struggles to lead another mule from the bowels of the earth, this one a jenny, he hears the gun shot. With heavy heart he laments, “Even this far below ground, I swear I feel his great weight fall.” Thus, Anthony is bringing up the soon dead, the honest mules that no longer serve a purpose and are therefore easily exterminated. And as a result, Anthony carries a great guilt for his role in the senseless destruction of a life that only served him and always did his bidding.
As with this final story, Farris’s entire collection contains difficult themes that resonate with readers as challenges of day-to-day life. The Appalachian setting unites the characters and influences many of their actions, but the diverse cast provides readers of all persuasions an opportunity to learn and investigate their own emotional reactions to similar scenarios.