Tea and Honey

Marquel, TPVs NYTimes Honey Section correspondent was befriending Winnie the Pooh when he read Administration Takes Steps to Aid Bees.  The White House announced new initiatives on Friday to promote the health of honeybees and other pollinators, which have suffered enormous losses in recent years.

The health of bees? Marquel was taken aback. Marquel didn’t think the health of bees was trivial. Everyone knows our entire food chain depends on the pollination of bees. If Marquel were a better scientist he could explain how the health of bisons, éléphants, and even porcupines dépends on pollinisation. But a White House announcement seemed…well…inappropriate, all things considered. Huge losses it said. Bees? I know it’s true but we’ve had huge losses elsewhere, much higher on the food chain.

The bees. Would they be like the Lost Girls? A Hash tag campaign? What more for the bees? Marquel needed a source. He called the national beekeepers association and indeed they had someone who worked with the Administration on this.

I met him at their national headquarters on Madison Avenue.

“So,” I said, “what’s going on with the administration and the bees? I know we’ve had terrible problems with bees for a few years, but why the sudden Administration interest?”

“Apparently Mahlia had a section on bees this year. Michelle had just finished telling her the facts of life, so everything sort of meshed and Mahlia was really upset that the bees were having trouble pollinating the flowers. She kind of confused it with ED, but the results were the same. Several dinner conversations led to a Cabinet meeting, and the order was issued, ‘save the bees.’ “

“Interesting,” I said. “Too bad Sasha didn’t have a section on MidEast politics. Could have saved a lot of lives.”

“Well that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “Save lots of lives.”

“Arabs?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Bees.”

“What are the specific plans?” I asked.

“Well, we were going to put a new section under Obamacare. We were going to call it ‘Section B’ but others thought that was too flippant. Then we spoke to the Republicans and they were totally against any increase in benefits.”

“Even for bees?” I asked.

“Even for bees. No more benefits.” he said. “So, we put it under Medicare.”

“Medicare for bees? Don’t they have to be a certain age?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” he said. “There are sections of Medicare that apply to dependent children of any age. Bees fit right in there.”

“Isn’t that going to be an administrative nightmare?” I asked.

“Well, it could have been,” he said, “but Obama decided to send in 30,000 advisers, mostly National Guard, who will go check on all the bees in the country and make sure every one is covered by Medicare.”

“Will they get hospitalization, too?” I asked.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he said. “If a bee has to be hospitalized, it’s too late to save him, so most of this is for healthy bees, designed to keep them healthy.”

“What about the states? They’ve fucked up Medicare good for humans. Don’t they threaten to do the same for bees?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he said. “The politics for bees are different than for people. Each state has an important beekeeping demographic, and although they’re not super powerful, there is no organized resistance. The Common Core was a temporary setback.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“In theory each child in Medicare has to comply with Common Core and try as we did, we couldn’t find any exception.”

“So how are you going to get bees up to Common Core standards?” I asked.

“We’re going to have each one certified as ADHD. There’s no question bees have short attention spans and though they work well together, they tend to be a bit obsessive. So we were able to get a psychological exception for all of beedom.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You seem to be doing for bees what we can’t do with people. What do the Koch brothers have to say about this?” I asked.

“The Koch brothers have been strangely silent,” he said. “But the Tea Party has spoken out in favor of the bees.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Honey,” he said.

“Honey?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he said. How can you have a Tea Party without tea?”

“It’s tough, but they’ve managed.” I said. “But you’re right. And so?”

“Well,” he said, “how can you have tea without honey?”

“It can be done.” I said.

“Yeah, but then you’ve got Bloomberg on your ass for the sugar.” he said. “It’s virtually un-American to be opposed to honey. It’s almost anti-Biblical.”

“So you think this thing is a go?” I asked. “And it’ll work?”

“I think so,” he said. “The Congressional Budget Office had to give an estimate, as they always do, of the cost of legislation. Their only reservation was if there was massive fraud and others besides bees were enrolled fraudulently.”

“Like wasps?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Wasps can damage a lot of government programs. It came down to one simple very small, even microscopic thing.”

“What was that?” I asked, truly curious.

“Medicare cards. Each bee has to have one.” he said.

“How’s that going to work?” I asked.

“That’s what the advisers are for. They’re going out into the field and issuing tiny cards.”

I left his office feeling like I’d just gone down Alice’s rabbit hole. I felt happy for the bees but even worse for everyone else. Are we all nuts? I was afraid to answer that so I went home and had some tea.

With lots of honey.

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BY MARQUEL: Tea and Honey.