A friend of mine shared that her daughter was recently stung by a bee, which was surprising to my friend, as it is January — not a time you typically look out for bees. And a year ago, I would have been as surprised as my friend to see a bee sting in January.
But that was a year ago.
Before the Science Fair of 2023.
Before we learned about the Bee-ening.
Last year, Josh was in fourth grade. At the time, our school required all fourth- and fifth-graders to participate in the science fair. It wasn’t meant to be a high-pressure situation (I don’t even think it was graded); it was to encourage the youths to learn more about the scientific method and how to problem-solve and some other school phrases. I didn’t hate the idea, especially because many of the topics that the students could pick from involved experience that required mechanical expertise, which is Daniel’s jam. In fact, I felt downright smug as I considered how very easy the science fair would be for us, what with Daniel’s skillset and Joshua’s deep love of asking questions.
“Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18.
That verse will become relevant very soon.
Anyway, Josh had to choose his science fair topic at some point in September of 2022. He looked at all the options, read the descriptions, and picked the only topic that did not involve creating some type of simple machine. Josh, who has many talents but does not really enjoy the machining and the physics like his father does, chose the topic that spoke to him most clearly: Protecting pollinators in Georgia.
Terrific.
But it was his project, and we could learn about bees, and it wasn’t the worst idea.
Here is a little tip for you: even great ideas aren’t great if you don’t actually act on them.
Months passed. I quickly forgot about the science fair. In my defense, I had SO much to do — the new season of The Crown was out, I had to pick some new spells for my abjuration wizard because I leveled up, I had to wash my hair… the list was endless. I’m only human.
But, Kristen, you may ask — didn’t Josh’s teacher remind you?
She did.
Okay, but, Kristen, you may ask — did the school not give you a due date?
It did.
Fine, Kristen, but — didn’t you write the date down on your calendar? (That one is for my mom.)
I did.
Listen, this is not a story of how the school system failed Josh. This is a story of how Josh’s mother failed to function as an adult in such a way that absolutely zero progress was made on this rassafrassin bee project whatsoever.
That all changed one Friday, when Josh came skipping off the school bus with the reminder that his science fair project was due the following Monday.
Important note: In the course of nearly 13 years of marriage, Daniel has been out of town maaaaaaybe three times. He doesn’t travel for work. He doesn’t even stay out late. But during this weekend, the weekend that involved Joshua reminding me about his project, Daniel was out of town.
Yeah.
So, back to Josh — he reminds me of the science fair project. And I would like to say I reacted calmly, but none of you would believe me. I ran inside (abandoning my children in the driveway) and checked the 3,000 reminders that the school has sent us. Josh was right. This project was due in a little over 48 hours and we had done absolutely nothing.
Josh and I read through the topic description together, and my heart sank even further. He was supposed to find a way to protect pollinators, like bees, in his local environment. Not only was it one of the coldest January days, it was also drizzling all weekend long. Not a great opportunity for bee-assisting.
During our research, Josh also let me know (again, he was very cheerful about this) that the teacher in charge of this science fair had offered to help each kid in the class. When I asked if Josh had ever taken her up on that offer, Josh looked at me very seriously and said, “Oh, no, Mommy. I knew you would want to help me instead.”
Terrific.
We learned that while bees do tend to hang near the hive during winter, they would occasionally leave to either find food or take a “cleansing flight,” which is what it’s called when a bee takes a potty break. #themoreyouknow
And when the bees leave to take care of business (beesiness?), they often can’t make it back to their hive because of rain, sleet, snow — basically everything that doesn’t stop the USPS. In those cases, the bees look for a little hole to hide inside, like a lil sensory bee swing, and wait until it’s safe to return to the mothership. To protect the pollinators, bee enthusiasts suggested that people make a bee hotel to give the bees some first-class room service during the stay.
Our bee hotel was made out of a yogurt container, rolled up construction paper, sticks, my tears, and looked like this:
Joshua loved it. He declared himself the hotel manager and decorated the bee hotel with a fervor that can only be found in someone who doesn’t have any children participating in a science fair. And I only cried a little.
We finished the hotel and hung it outside on a branch, just like the instructions told us. We waited.
No bees came.
Ah, well. Easy come, easy go, right? Can’t grieve forever.
But then Jenna got involved, and she told us how she had seen a show that talked about how you could attract bees with certain types of flowers or plants. This is why you don’t let kids watch educational television. I pointed out that there weren’t a lot of plants blooming in the bleak midwinter. Jenna, ever-helpful, reminded me that our grocery store always had plants, and we could just go get a plant from the store.
Te. Rif. Fic.
We found a lavender plant (a flower? I don’t do plants. It was purple. It was called lavender. Choose your own adventure.), which Jenna identified as being the scent of choice for bees everywhere. So now we had a bee hotel hanging by some yarn over a potted lavender plant.
I had few hopes. Mostly, I just wanted this to end.
The last requirement of the project was for the student to write up what they did and if it worked. Our printer had conveniently stopped working just a few days before, a fact that Daniel had planned to address upon his return. After all, as he pointed out and I agreed, we didn’t print all that much.
I called my mom and asked if she could print off our bee project write-up. And since I knew there was no way that any bees were coming to our sad Motel 6 of a bee hotel, I went ahead and asked Josh to write out why the project didn’t work, and what we could do differently (besides, you know, actually doing the project), and sent it all to my mom to print.
On Saturday night, it was finally over. The bees had not arrived. The hotel manager was in bed. We could rest knowing that this was… well, not a job well done. But it was done.
The following day, it rained even harder. I was dreading going outside to check on our soggy bee hotel, which I had promised Josh we could leave up until Sunday night, “just in case.” He put on his raincoat and asked if he could go perform his hotel manager duties and check on his unoccupied hotel. I agreed, thinking at least he had enjoyed the craft part.
Two minutes later, Josh ran back inside with an announcement:
A bee had checked into the hotel.
There was no way, I thought; absolutely zero chance that a bee had flown into this thing and stayed. I ran outside to check.
A bee had, indeed, checked into the hotel.
I’m not gonna lie… I was a little irritated. Not only was this bee undermining my whole “this is why we don’t leave things until the last minute” speech I had given to Josh earlier, but now our carefully crafted pre-written conclusion of failure was useless.
But at least it had worked. Now Josh could go to school and fool his teachers into thinking his parents were competent for one more semester. We took away the conclusion, added some photos of the bee in the hotel, and hoped the results would speak for themselves with little to no follow-up questions asked about the timeline.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, Daniel came home, and helped us turn the Failed Bee Project into the Wow, It Really Worked Bee Project. Finally, the world’s longest weekend was over.
The following morning, Daniel woke me up before he left for work. He had gone outside to retrieve the bee hotel to put it in our van so Josh could bring it to school. Except Daniel couldn’t retrieve the bee hotel, because it was now literally buzzing and filled with at least 20 bees.
Apparently our bee hotel had filled quite a gap in the market.
This required Daniel to quickly make a new bee hotel, because a) he didn’t want to get stung 800 times when he moved the OG bee hotel, and b) after all this work, we would be darned if Josh didn’t have SOMETHING to bring to school that was, preferably, not filled with bees.
Joshua brought his project to school the following day. All was well.
Fast forward to our school’s STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) night, where they were going to showcase the science fair winners and honorable mentions in the school’s media center. Nothing against science, but Daniel and I had had our fill for the year, so we didn’t even plan to look.
That was, of course, until we saw Joshua’s project, beckoning us closer like… bees to a yogurt hotel.
Okay, I thought, they must have put all the projects in here.
Nope.
After I saw Joshua’s project, I saw something else on the front of the posterboard: a shiny ribbon that said “Honorable Mention.”
Son of a bee hotel.
It wasn’t enough that we were able to make the bee hotel. It wasn’t enough that the hotel had actually worked. No, after all that, Josh received an honorable mention in the school science fair. He was one of only around 30 kids to be singled out.
Unbeelievable.
Thankfully, the Honorable Mentions did not advance to the next level of the science fair. When I tell you that I would have sabotaged my own child’s project before I celebrating having to continue with the madness, I mean it. But Josh was happy with his work, and didn’t even notice the very small aneurism plaguing his mother as she surveyed the scene in front of her with a mixture of surprise, delight, and rage.
The bee hotel lived on for many months. Summer actually saw fewer bees visit the hotel — the management thinks it’s because our yarn was fraying. Who knows. But since we had sort of skirted some building codes, our bee hotel eventually became one with the recycling bin. It does live forever in our hearts (and in the parts of our brains associated with white-hot anger). Plus we have that sweet ribbon.
All in all, I learned a lot that weekend. I learned about bees, of course, and how much Josh loved managing hotels. We learned about the bathroom habits of bees and that you shouldn’t write a conclusion for a project you haven’t actually finished.
What didn’t we learn? The fact that leaving a science project until the last minute never, ever goes well. I would elaborate, but I have to get back to helping Jenna finish her science project. It’s about birds, and it is, of course, due tomorrow.
thepluckyprocrastinator 