Of course I noticed a proliferation of dark specks sprinkled on the snow in a wide area under the familiar old pine when we descended the first long hill into the ravine yesterday afternoon on a heavily overcast day. I simply took it for granted that the winds of the day before had brought down more detritus from the overhanging trees in the forest canopy. And I didn't think it at all peculiar that Jackie and Jillie, nose to the ground, were busily sniffing about at them.

My husband has keener eyesight than I do, and he saw what they were immediately. As I continued to veer off to the left and up another hill, he stopped. I turned back to watch, wondering what was delaying him. He had taken off one of his mittens, stooped to the frozen ground well packed in old snow, and lifted something into his hand, closely scrutinizing it, rolling it back and forth in his hand. Before laying it gently back down under the old pine tree, to continue on.

When he caught up with me, he explained that the 'black dots' I'd seen which Jackie and Jillie were so interested in were in fact not desiccated cellulose, but bees. That venerable old pine at the foot of the first descent has been host to wild bees for as long as we can recall. About a third of the way up the trunk is an opening and in the summer we can see, far above, busy flights of bees entering and exiting their hive.

One year the bees were gone, and that winter and the one after, two little black squirrels we would always see together inhabited the hole in  the tree trunk. We called them Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and used to feed them peanuts in the shell. Bees eventually returned and laid prior claim and we've no idea where the two little squirrels moved to. For all we know they may be among those that visit our porch daily to pick up bread squares and sunflower seeds we put out every morning. Jackie and Jillie watch the ensuing parade of squirrels and birds and shout noisily their resentment at 'their' property being invaded.

But yesterday, during our walk with our two little dogs through the ravine, we pondered together what might have happened to the current residents of the hive. Something had entered it, and it might have been a squirrel, to evict them. We couldn't know whether the bees were hibernating, or whether they had perished with the onset of extraordinarily icy temperatures that arrived in November. But there their little carcasses lay, a pitiable sight.