Easter Eggs and Honey Bees

With Easter Sunday fast approaching, I thought I’d write a post about Easter eggs.  But not the colorful dyed kind you hide around the yard for children to find.  And not the chocolate kind you find at the drugstore to stuff into festive Easter baskets (and your mouth).  Although I have nothing against either - I used to love dying and searching for Easter eggs at my grandmother’s house every year when I was a kid; and I still stock up on Cadbury Creme eggs each year between February and April, when Valentine’s Day is over and retail stores immediately don their aisles in a pastel Easter theme.  

I’m talking about the ‘Easter eggs’ you see in movies or find in books.  In my experience, I have seen or heard about more ‘Easter eggs’ in films than discovered them in books.  A popular one is the depiction of R2-D2 and C-3P0 as hieroglyphs on a pillar in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”  However, I recently discovered something that I like to think of as an ‘Easter egg’ in my father, Bill Crider’s, last Sheriff Dan Rhodes story, “Tell the Bees.”  The title of the story comes from the custom in which bees should be told of important events in their keepers’ lives; otherwise, the bees might die, leave the hive, or stop producing honey.  The story revolves around bee rustlers, and at one point references bee hive boxes that are painted in various bright colors.  It is my understanding from my own experience and a quick search on the internet that bee hive boxes are usually painted white on the outside to reflect the sun and heat, but it doesn’t really matter to the bees what color they are.  

My father’s father kept bees, which probably had a hand in inspiring my father’s short story, although I don’t think my grandfather ever had any bees rustled.  I don’t know much about my grandfather’s bee-keeping enterprise, but I do remember benefitting from the fresh honey he would give us in little plastic honey bear bottles.  

I was recently going through some old photos and came across one of my grandfather showing off his bee hive boxes - and they were as brightly colored as dyed Easter eggs.  

Billy Crider and his colorful bee hive boxes

I can only assume that my grandfather’s multicolored bee hive boxes influenced the similarly colored bee hive boxes in my father’s short story.  I love getting a bit of personal insight into a writer’s inspiration.  And if my grandfather’s boxes had nothing to do with the story?  I don’t really care to know.  

Coincidentally, Bill Crider has a story called "The Easter Cat" in Fire Star Press's Nine Deadly Lives:  An Anthology of Feline Fiction.  Check it out on Amazon.

Happy Easter to all!  What are your favorite Easter traditions?  A big family lunch? Dying and hiding Easter eggs?  Eating lots of chocolate?  Tell me about them in the comments.

Angela Crider Neary is an attorney by day and writer by night. She is an avid mystery reader and especially enjoys reading novels set in interesting locales. She was inspired to write her first mystery novella, Li'l Tom and the Pussyfoot Detective Bureau: The Case of the Parrots Desaparecidos, by one of her favorite areas in San Francisco, Telegraph Hill.  Her second book, Li'l Tom and the Case of the New Year Dragon is now available.  To learn more, visit her on Facebook and Amazon.