The bees swarmed into my daughter’s front yard on the third of July, which meant that her guests arriving the next day for the holiday had to go around to the side door to enter the house. Bees do that. They swarm in search of a new home when a hive gets overcrowded. They found refuge on my daughter’s porch. Then they got to work.

The front yard had become increasingly buzzy by the time I visited a week later. The neighbors were concerned. The property manager was consulted. Arrangements were made for an apian expert to deal with the new hive. The Bee Man, as my 3-year-old granddaughter called him, came to the rescue. He arrived with a ladder, a hat, a telescopic camera attached to his phone, and a smoke machine. He was friendly and unpretentious: He didn’t dress like a beekeeper in full anonymous uniform. Best of all, the Bee Man turned out to be a teacher. My daughter and granddaughter and I, three generations of sometimes irritating curiosity, sat safely behind a window screen and learned some of the specifics he knew about bees.

The Bee Man explained that, first of all, bee colonies are organized. They follow the opposite model of a patriarchy: Bees have a queen. She is their reason for living. The queen runs a tight ship. She lays all the eggs for the next generation and directs all the activities of the other bees. The female bees are the workers (this said with a smile for his audience). They venture out into the world to collect pollen and nectar, thereby pollinating the plants they visit. They fly fast and have a great sense of smell. They produce honey to nourish the bees, making extra for the winter. They also build and protect the hive. Worker bees only live for five or six weeks, but the queen can live for five years. If the queen bee dies, the workers select a newly hatched baby and feed it royal jelly, so that it can become a new queen. The male bees are the drones. All they do is mate with the queen. If that sounds like a good life, the Bee Man said, keep in mind that the drones are kicked out of the hive in winter.

We were captivated. An admission: As much as I manage to coexist with bees, I avoid them. Since I have never been stung by a bee, I harbor a (no-longer-secret) fear that I am actually so highly allergic to bee stings that the first one will kill me. I try to keep in mind that bees are not aggressive like murder hornets—but still. I keep my distance. When I do the New York Times “Spelling Bee” game every day, however, I see a close-up photo of a bee going about her job among the flowers. The photos are lovely. And as the Bee Man taught us, the work of bees is impressive. Much respect to you, bees.

We watched as the Bee Man lit a fire in a can and produced black smoke. He waved the smoke onto his hands and his pants cuffs, saying that the bees, who were by now circling about him in mildly inquisitive fashion, don’t like the smoke. He explained how he was locating the hive, which seemed to be nestled within a brick pillar holding up the porch roof. His camera with its probing light disappeared into a hole he’d drilled. He guided it carefully. Then he showed us the video being transmitted to his phone: an active beehive, dripping with honey, covered in busy industrious bees. “One week,” said the Bee Man, with awe and evident pride in his charges. “They’ve established this hive in one week.”

The Bee Man explained how he was going to capture the bees and relocate them. This was a relief. Contrary to my daughter’s belief, it is not illegal to kill bees in California if they’re in your yard, but my daughter didn’t want to cause their demise. She has an affinity for bees. She has always seen them as harbingers of good news and had mixed feelings about removing them at all. But common sense and parenthood dictated otherwise. She was happy to learn that the Bee Man had too much regard for the bees to harm them, no matter the law. Over two days, the Bee Man drilled strategic holes and patiently smoked the bees out, catching the drowsy escapees in a kind of bee vacuum in order to bring them to a new home. It felt a little like he was telling my granddaughter that the bees were going to be happier on a farm upstate, one with lots of flowers and sunshine and friendly neighbors. But we trusted him.

I think we all felt a little sad when the bees were gone and we could use the front door again.

Although now that the bees have been removed, we can forget about them. They’re just bees. They buzz around our gardens and annoy us at picnics. They’re insignificant. But the Bee Man’s knowledge of them and reverence for them got me thinking about the marvelous interconnectedness of God’s creation: If the bees disappeared, the Bee Man said, so would our food sources. If the bees stopped doing their jobs, we would all suffer dire consequences. I thought about the lesson of the bees for us humans, that the act of us doing our small jobs within our finite networks has value, even though we may feel unsung. The work we are about matters. Our place in the divine scheme matters. Our relationships to our fellow earth-mates matter. Our perseverance in doing the work matters. Our faith that the work matters matters.

Driving through the state of Utah several years ago, I learned that the little icon of the beehive on all the state highway signs referred to Utah’s nickname as the Beehive State. The 19th-century, early Mormon settlers selected the beehive as a symbol of their commitment to hard work and community. It seems the beehive is the perfect metaphor for the common good, a spiritual ecosystem of care and busyness and grace, under the direction of the One.

Maybe if we were to think of ourselves and conduct ourselves as God’s workers and drones, as holy bees within God’s holy hive, the world would benefit. Some of us prefer to think of ourselves and conduct ourselves as murder hornets. Some of us assume we are the queen bee. Some of us would rather destroy the hive than expand it. Some of us want to smoke the others out. I’m out of metaphors now. But I look at my granddaughter’s blessed face, and Lord, I don’t want her to be out of time. Let’s get busy. Let’s organize ourselves. Let’s work together. Let’s protect the hive.

Valerie Schultz is a freelance writer, a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and the author of Till the Moon Be No More: The Grit and Grace of Growing Older. She lives on the Oregon Coast.