The Unseen Preparation

Spring - Week 17 - On Bee Swarms and Moment of Emergence

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

May Day arrived this week, and right on schedule so did the afternoon thunderstorms and wild winds of these evolving spring days in Colorado. The dark, wild skies resembled ink blooming in water. Stretching out in billowing clouds of charcoal and indigo, their edges illuminated by brief flashes of lightning. But by morning these tempestuous afternoons give way to bright, sunny mornings where from my kitchen window, Mount Meeker offers her daily greeting. Each new day she presents a different face, a subtly altered mood. But today at almost 14,000 feet, Mount Meeker wears her winter crown like a defiant queen, her snowy mantle gleaming against a throne of emerald foothills that bow at her feet.

This visual paradox, this quickly changing landscape where seasons shift within hours teaches that the natural world operates with a complexity we often overlook. Winter and spring coexist in the same moment, not as adversaries but as courtiers in a royal pageant, each attending to their sovereign duties in their appointed time. The boundaries between dormancy and awakening blur in this natural court, revealing that hidden transitions are happening constantly beneath the surface of what we perceive.

This dance of seasons plays out not just in the majestic vista of Mount Meeker and her foothills, but in the humble soil beneath my feet. Though the Colorado earth appeared barren and dormant just weeks ago, an invisible preparation was underway. Roots strengthening, energy gathering, life forces coiling like springs waiting to be released.

Now, as I walk through my garden, I'm struck by the extraordinary transformation. The daffodils and tulips give way to the early sprouts of native purple coneflowers, sunny foxgloves will reach skyward, and cerise-tipped valerian add splashes of color. The gamut of white, blue, and pink alliums, salvias, and delphiniums create a tapestry where barrenness once reigned. Most impressive are my beloved hollyhocks, their broad leaves unfurling—harbingers of the seven-foot giants they'll become, swaying like tentacles in the late summer breeze.

Nature's patience humbles me. All that magnificence didn't happen overnight, but required months of unseen preparation. How often I've wished for immediate growth in my own life, forgetting that meaningful transformation follows this same pattern — the intimate work of self-creation before stepping into the light.

Today's bee swarm offered another perspective on this theme. I was just about to leave the house when I noticed thousands of bees suddenly flying around my garden — the air alive with their humming bodies. What had been a typical spring morning transformed in an instant, as I realized I was witnessing a swarm taking place right before my eyes. Standing safely in my bee suit as they spiraled around me, the sound wild and intoxicating, I became immersed in a moment where hidden intention became a visible purpose.

A few hours later, I discovered them clustered on a juniper branch, remarkably accessible at only four feet above the ground, and managed to capture the swarm to begin a new hive. What appeared to be a spontaneous event was actually the culmination of countless invisible preparations within the colony: scout bees had been searching for new homes, workers raising a new queen, decisions being gathered and made for weeks. The bees had been preparing for this dramatic exodus long before I witnessed their flight, just as the most significant changes in our lives often germinate unseen before suddenly manifesting in the world.

Shakespeare's words echo in my ears: “And one man in his time plays many parts.” Each iteration of myself, each role I've played and transformation I've undergone, required its own period of unseen preparation. The person I am today was germinating long before becoming visible, just as the person I'm becoming is taking shape in ways not yet apparent to me, or the world.

I think of the wild turkeys I spotted in the hedgerow this week, how they moved with purpose and certainty through the landscape. They don't question the cycles of preparation and emergence that guide their lives. There's wisdom in trusting these natural rhythms rather than rushing the process.

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The Colorado landscape teaches this lesson with stark clarity: what appears harshest can nurture the most spectacular growth. Just as Mount Meeker maintains its snowy crown while life burgeons in the foothills below, our lives too contain multitudes— dormancy and growth, endings and beginnings, all coexisting. The barren winter ground erupts into life not despite its dormant period, but because of it. Each season of seeming inactivity is actually a critical phase of gathering strength for what comes next.

There's also a particular quality to Colorado spring that magnifies this lesson. Its dramatic swings between winter and the path to summer, sometimes within the same twenty-four hours, illustrate nature's remarkable adaptability. Just last week, I woke to frost on the ground, only to shed layers by midday as temperatures climbed. The plants and creatures here have evolved an extraordinary flexibility, an ability to retreat quickly when conditions turn harsh and emerge just as swiftly when opportunity presents itself.

I've been contemplating the parallels in my own journey. The parts I've played — wife, daughter, friend, beekeeper, writer, gardener — aren't discrete roles I've stepped into and out of, but accumulating layers of identity, each built upon the foundations laid before. Like the soil in my garden, enriched year after year with fallen leaves and spent blossoms, my capacity deepens with each season weathered, each lesson absorbed.

The swarm illustrates how growth sometimes requires division, the courage to break from what has been safely established. The mother hive will continue, now with space to expand in new directions, while the swarm establishes itself elsewhere, carrying the genetic memory and collected wisdom of the original colony. Nothing is truly lost in this division — rather, potential is multiplied.

This principle echoes in the root systems spreading beneath my garden. The prairie grasses native to this region can extend their roots twenty feet below the surface — far deeper than their visible growth above ground. These extensive networks allow them to survive drought, fire, and the harshest Colorado winters. What appears as magical resilience is actually the result of consistent, invisible investment in what sustains life.

Perhaps this is why I'm drawn to hollyhocks with their tall, swaying presence. They remind me that becoming visible, standing tall in one's truth requires first developing a sturdy foundation. Their journey from modest beginnings to towering splendor mirrors how our most authentic expressions rise from quiet, dedicated nurturing of what matters most.

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Last night, I heard the first crickets of the season, their tentative chirping a subtle announcement of warming nights. Tonight, I'll sleep with my window cracked open a little, listening to their chorus gaining confidence as more join in. Another life form that waits patiently through winter before announcing itself with its song. Their emergence, like the swarm, like the spring blooms, like the greening foothills, reminds me that timing cannot be forced. Each hidden transformation reveals itself precisely when it must. Not a moment too soon or too late in nature's intricate dance. These seasonal stirrings whisper that beneath apparent stillness, life prepares its next expression, waiting for the perfect moment to be revealed.

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—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let's experience nature's gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane