Abraham's Celestial Miracle

I had my pile of about twenty tiny, orange and grapefruit sized cabbages on the motor home couch. I brought four over to the counter and started to cut them up, when Joe brought me another one.

"Thank you, Joe! I am glad you brought me the last one," I teased.

He got a huge grin and walked back to the couch. He picked up another cabbage and said, "No! Here is the last cabbage," and brought me another. Then back to the couch: "Oh! Here is the last cabbage!"

Over and over, twenty times, we giggled our way through cabbage processing.

That was fun.

But it was more than fun when I went to check on the bees. I opened the top of the Celadon hive. It's humming, but not much appears to be happening yet in the upper level.

I looked at the Celestial hive before opening it. I had expected to find a massive number of drones, or a box of starved bees, comb taken over by the wax moths. A week ago, there were eight empty frames: no honey, no brood, no eggs. So it surprised me to see that there was still activity outside the hive: bees flying in and out.

And it surprised me to pull out the first frame and find bees daisy-chaining, as if they were making new comb. Why would a nearly dead hive want to build new comb?

The next frame had a bit of capped honey. Honey!? They hadn't starved yet, if they had more stores this week than last.

The next frame had bee babies. Little white grub-like babies. They weren't capped, and the frame wasn't full. Maybe laying workers had begun to lay eggs?

The next frame had brood. Perfect, gorgeous brood. Almost entirely full. It was so perfect, I wasn't sure I was seeing it properly. Maybe each cell was actually a drone cell. But drone cells are rounded, to create the space needed for the larger bodies. And these didn't seem to be rounded. But if each cell is rounded, would I be able to tell?

The next frame: more brood. And the next. Brood! This hive has hope and a future! And there was a drone cell, to remind me what rounded cells look like.

In utter disbelief, I removed each frame again. Did I miss a queen cell before? I didn't see one. Could I spot the queen?

On about the fourth frame, I think I spotted the queen. She had the extended abdomen, and very different coloring from the other bees. But the bees didn't appear to pay the appropriate attention to her, and she didn't actually lay an egg while I watched. I'm going to assume that's the queen, though.

She was unmarked, and I don't remember if I bought an unmarked queen this year (and I have no photo evidence, nor explicit receipts, to remind me).

So where did she come from? Was this an injured queen, nursed back to health? Or a swarm that I didn't notice that came and took over? Why did the hive dwindle to nothing, but now has life and hope?

I think it was Abraham's prayers. About a week ago, he began to pray (unprompted, if I remember correctly) that the bees would be okay and that they would make much honey.

I would not have prayed that. The grief over another failed hive was so great for me, I tried to be pleased with one hive.

But the way I felt like I was walking on air the rest of the day made me realize just how deep was my disappointment. Now changed to joy.