by Willa Reece
Suddenly, I felt claustrophobic. I could see through the netting, but it was thick and coarse enough to alter my vision and my breathing. And just beyond the net the hum of the bees was like another layer separating me from the rest of the world.
“It’s okay. You’ll be fine. And I really do appreciate the help,” Sadie said. She patted my shoulder as if she had sensed my unease. “My mother and I used to do this together. She just isn’t able to anymore.”
“Will the bees be aggressive toward an outsider?” I asked. The sound in the air had altered. Either the hood changed the acoustics of the hum I’d heard when I first arrived or the colony was getting louder and higher-pitched. Even entirely covered in canvas, the hair on my arms rose in response to the… warning?
Sadie looked toward the hive as if she’d noticed the alteration in the bees’ hum as well. Her hand settled more firmly on my shoulder and she held me in place for several long seconds. The sound stabilized at the higher pitch without climbing higher.
“Nothing to worry about,” Sadie said then. But the netting didn’t obstruct the slight furrow of her brow.
She wasn’t wearing coveralls. Her safety equipment consisted of tall rubber boots and gloves paired with jeans and a faded canvas barn coat she’d zipped to her throat. After looking toward the hives for a few seconds, she dug a netted hat from a sack in the back of the truck as if she hadn’t intended to wear it at first, but had changed her mind.
“I got the smoker going when I arrived. It’s over by the shed,” Sadie said. Her brow was covered now and I couldn’t tell by her voice if she was still concerned. She certainly moved decisively enough back the way she’d come earlier. I followed. The coveralls swished when I walked. Made with plenty of excess material to distance stingers from skin, they were cumbersome and uncomfortable, but now I found them reassuring rather than claustrophobic. Not being afraid of stings was easy when you were dealing with random insects flying around a garden or park. I recognized the tingle of fear now as my body responded with adrenaline to the presence of thousands of bees.
The smoker was a battered old tin tool with a pointed lid that made me think of The Wizard of Oz. From its spout, a thin trail of smoke curled upward. Sadie picked it up off the ground and showed me how pumping the handle engaged a small bellows that turned the smoke curl into cloudy puffs.
“This is another precaution. It prevents them from detecting alarm pheromones if any bees become distressed. They should be distracted enough by the new queens that we won’t need it. But…” Sadie looked again toward the hives. I could see only the shadow of her face behind her netted hat, but I sensed her hesitation.
Something was wrong.
The hair on the back of my neck joined the hairs on my arms at attention. The vibrations in the air shouldn’t have affected me through the layers of protective clothing, but they did. Several bees flew around us as Sadie looked toward the hive for longer than mere seconds this time. I shifted from foot to foot, trying to tamp down the flight instinct that was probably better honed than most people’s.
Granny had said beekeepers dealt with swarms every year. It was a natural part of the bees’ cycle. But Sadie’s sudden tension seemed out of place. And, yet, it wasn’t Sadie’s tension that had me worried.
It was the bees’ tension. Which made no sense at all. I had never worked with bees. I knew next to nothing about them. I certainly wouldn’t understand if their buzzing wings had something to say.
Finally, Sadie seemed to shake off whatever was bothering her. She turned back to me with surety once more.
“I keep woven skeps in this building. We’ll use them to lure the queen and her followers and then transfer them into the boxed hives I’ve prepared,” Sadie said. I reached down to pick up two of the bell-shaped, basket-like containers she indicated. The scent of fresh straw rose from the skeps combined with the cloying sweetness of honey. “Be careful. I’ve coated the inside with honey. Some beekeepers use artificial pheromones or a combination of beeswax and resin called propolis. But these mountain bees seem to prefer their own honey.”
Sadie held the smoker. I held a skep in each hand. Together, the three things felt very small in comparison to the sound of the bees that seemed to echo inside my head.
“What do I do?” I asked, trying not to shout.
“We’ll carefully approach a swarm and offer them the skep. It will be obvious where the queens are because they’ll be surrounded by a mass of bees that have split off from the original hive. Come, I’ll show you,” Sadie said.
I had come to help, so I continued in her footsteps in spite of the hum in my head and the adrenaline response of my body. If some nuance had reassured Sadie, then I should be reassured as well.
Because of my impeded vision, I didn’t notice at first that the wind had shifted. Apple blossoms no longer floated through the air. Now, it was a flurry of honeybees that brushed along my hood and net. Once I noticed, I watched hundreds of little insects dancing around Sadie’s form in front of me. Rather than act like she didn’t notice them, she slowed and moved more carefully as if she was hyperaware of her body in relation to the bees’ environment. No sudden movements. No jarring steps or turns. I tried to mimic her, but had much less experience. Several times, I felt the impact of a fuzzy bullet against me. Kamikaze or accidental collision? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe the bees dive-bombing me were simply attracted to the honeyed skeps I carried across the yard.
“We’re good. They’re keyed up, but we’re good,” Sadie said. I didn’t correct her because I thought my inexperience and fear made dive bombs out of regular flight. “And it looks like the saplings I planted have done the trick.”
In between the beehives and the split-rail fence that separated the apiary from the orchard, a row of young trees had been planted. I immediately understood why when I saw the pulsing balls of bees that hung from low branches on two of the trees.
“Looks like we’ll be starting two new hives this year,” Sadie said. “Just as I thought.” I could hear pride and satisfaction in her voice. I was happy for her. Really. Until I fully understood what she needed me to do.
I was dizzy as Sadie led the way around the box hives to the first tree. The sound of the bees pulsed in my head until it actually interfered with my equilibrium. She wordlessly directed me with gestures to raise the bell-shaped skep with the open end under the vibrating ball of the bee swarm. Then, Sadie began to scoop handfuls of bees into the skep. They didn’t resist. They didn’t leave once they were there because more joined them, handful after handful, until finally Sadie uncovered the virgin queen. She was much larger in size, but I doubted I would have been able to identify her as readily as Sadie.
The seasoned beekeeper reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of plastic that looked almost like a hair clip. The bulk of the bees were in the skep I held now, but there were many stragglers flying around us. That changed when Sadie opened the clip and closed it to form a safe plastic cage around the queen. Once she placed the clip in the skep, most of the straggler bees followed. I hadn’t realized how tense Sadie was because of the net covering her face. When the queen was relocated, she patted me on the back and I saw her shoulders relax.
“I’ve prepared an empty hive, but we’ll turn the skep over on the grass in front of it and let them settle in together for a little bit first,” Sadie said. “We can lure the other swarm while we give this one a minute to eat and calm down.”
Sadie helped me turn the skep over and place it on the freshly trimmed grass in front of the empty hive. I was sure the clumps of bees would fall out, but they were clinging to each other and the woven edges of the skep, busily eating the honey coating Sadie had gifted them.
“Now, I’ll hold the skep this time and you’ll urge the bees into it,” Sadie said.
I reluctantly let go of the second skep. I was getting used to the sound of the bees and I was beginning to trust the suit that protected me from stings, but even with gloves, I wasn’t s
ure I wanted to hold handfuls of bees for the seconds necessary to move them from tree to skep.
I didn’t have time to gather my nerve before the loud roar of a car engine interrupted us. We both turned toward the road to see that the old sedan was back. Instead of parking behind the truck and Granny’s bike on the road, it had cut over the grass toward the hives as if the driver thought he was driving a sport utility vehicle instead of something resembling a hearse. Even over the car’s engine and the humming roar of the bees, I heard Sadie gasp as the sedan came to a stop barely a foot from the farthest hive. She stepped forward as if she would have thrown herself between the chrome grill and the bees.
But she brought herself up short when a Sect man jumped from behind the wheel of the car. He was carrying a jar of honey. And then he was brandishing it in the air. His face was red under his wide-brimmed black hat and he stomped forward without a care for the bees that whirled around him.
“Reverend Moon warned you. He’s warned all of you. We don’t want your filth anywhere near our women. None of your lotions or drinks. None of your unguents or balms. We will not abide your unnatural meddling,” the man shouted.
He raised the jar of honey over his head and threw it. It sailed in an ugly arc straight toward Sadie’s head and she dropped the skep she was holding, to either try to catch the jar or shield her face I couldn’t be sure. The Sect man pulled my focus. I raised my hands and pointed them toward him. The jar fell sooner than its trajectory said it should. It fell at Sadie’s boots and busted open against a rock on the ground.
But I couldn’t worry over spilled honey.
I had room in my mind for only the buzz of thousands of bees. They roared between my ears and the roar turned into fury. I didn’t even try to fight it. It matched and melded with my own. And with my raised hands and pointed fingers I told it to fly.
The Sect man finally noticed when he was hit by the fourth or fifth tiny projectile. He wasn’t wearing protective coveralls or a net. When the bees hit, they were able to sting. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
He had attacked us. Now we were defended. The vibration in my mind and all around me seemed to have soaked all the way to my heart. Interloper. Intruder. Invader. For once in my life, I wasn’t the outsider.
“Stop,” Sadie said. I heard the sob in her voice more than I processed her command. “Every sting is a death. He’s not worth their lives.”
I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know how. I didn’t control the bees. They controlled me. I was a swarm of rage and I had to protect my queen and my home.
The Sect man was shouting in fear now. Swatting at the stinging bees that pelted him from all directions. He jigged from foot to foot, no longer looking as if he could ever tell a group of women how they should live or what they should do. Like a marionette on strings, he danced as sting after sting spurred him on.
“Mel, lower your arms and close your eyes.” It wasn’t another command from Sadie. She had gone silent. But I recognized the voice. I looked toward the speaker. “No one’s in danger now. He’s not going to hurt Sadie or the apiary.”
Jacob Walker must have approached from the orchard. He’d climbed over the fence and stepped toward us with his hands out as if he was talking to a person with a loaded gun. But his deep, calm voice interrupted the angry buzz of the bees. I blinked. I shook my head. The roar between my ears faded. And my hands came down.
The biologist stopped several feet away, giving me space to process what had happened, but before I could, the Sect man yelled a garbled prayer for deliverance.
Walker and I looked toward Sadie, but she had disappeared. In her place, a giant swarm of bees had massed over Sadie’s form. Her arms were stretched out to her sides. Her legs were planted shoulder width apart. A sheet of bees covered the net over her face and they danced angrily over and around her entire body in a constantly moving suit made of bees.
We both stepped toward her at the same time. Me, with no idea how to help. Could she breathe? Would they sting? We both stopped short when she began to speak.
“You made a mistake coming here. We will protect home. Always,” Sadie said. Only it was more than Sadie, amplified and reverberated by the vibrations of thousands of wings. Her voice sounded changed, augmented by an alien colony intelligence I would never truly understand. She also sounded completely unafraid.
The Sect man was already running for the open door of his sedan. He slipped several times and each time he squealed as he struggled to keep his footing. From this distance, I could see that one of his eyes was already swelling shut and his face was covered in welts. I thought his mouth looked misshapen, and there were no more prayers tainted with misogynism from his lips.
The sedan’s tires spun on the grass, digging deep rivets in the earth as the Sect man floored the gas pedal. He finally got traction on the road and with a shriek of gravel he sped away. I hurried over to where he’d been standing. At my feet, dead and dying bees covered the ground. Hundreds of them. Tears burned my eyes. I didn’t know what had happened or what exactly I had done. But I knew I’d done something wrong. I turned to face whatever judgment the bee-covered Sadie meted out.
But she was no longer covered in bees.
Walker had gone to her and helped her remove the hat and face net. In spite of the bees. But if he was stung, he didn’t flinch. Not once. I reluctantly joined them. Abandoning the evidence of the carnage I had caused. The buzz of fury was only a remembered echo in my mind. The ferocious defensiveness against an attack had faded, leaving me shaken as adrenaline drained.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Sadie didn’t look at me. Maybe she couldn’t bear to see my face. The killer of her bees. Or maybe she was just exhausted because she leaned against the nearest hive as if to prevent her collapse. The bees that had engulfed her body had broken back up into individuals. Many had gone back to their hives, but some still flew around the entrances as if they too were shaken.
“I came to tell Sadie about a wild hive I found. In a tree that was struck by lightning last year,” Walker said. Neither of us had asked him about his presence. I didn’t know about the older woman, but I was becoming used to him showing up. Especially during trouble.
“This was my fault. I didn’t know you would be able to hear them or help them,” Sadie said. She finally looked up at me. She didn’t look angry only resigned. “They would have attacked him anyway. You simply gave them direction. You helped them to coalesce in purpose. I was so shocked. I counteracted with direction of my own. I called them home. To me,” Sadie said.
My shakes were dissipating. I wasn’t at all tired or depleted, while Sadie looked like she might need help to get to her truck. Had I really controlled the bees? Had I directed them to attack? I couldn’t deny their buzzing had made me feel funny from the moment I’d arrived at the apiary. The noise had seemed to get inside my head. And even though I’d been swathed in thick coveralls, I had definitely felt the bees urgently bumping into me when I followed Sadie to the hives. Had some of them been coming to me the way they came to Sadie? I hadn’t consciously called them. I wouldn’t know how to even if I tried.
Walker had moved away from us. He was gathering up the sticky pieces of broken glass, carefully avoiding the bees who were attracted to the spilled honey. How had he known? And how had he known what I needed to do?
“Granny was right about you,” Sadie said quietly, for my ears alone. “You need to open yourself up to training. You’ve been closed off, but that’s changing and you’ll need to learn how to handle what’s happening to you.”
“I’ve been studying the remedy book. And helping Granny,” I replied. But my voice wavered. A healthy dose of skepticism had helped me to survive more times than I could count in my life. It was one thing to be inspired by the connection I’d felt to Lu and her magical music. It was another to be possessed by angry bees.
I’d felt the bees’ ferocity. It had melded with my own, increasing it, and I hadn’t known how to control tha
t connection. Jacob Walker had snapped me out of it. He had interrupted before I’d decimated the apiary.
Sadie was right. I couldn’t handle what was happening to me. Not alone. I’d been studying the remedy book, but I’d missed a valuable lesson—wisewomen believed in community. I’d been learning about how everything was connected, but I’d still been keeping a part of myself in reserve. My bug-out bag was always packed. I hadn’t been prepared for the sudden, total, consuming oneness with the bees.
Sarah’s special abilities had always seemed to come so naturally to her. If she had somehow bequeathed even a portion of her affinity for the natural world to me, I was certainly not handling it well.
Sadie patted my shoulder. Could she sense the lingering shakiness beneath her hand? I stepped away just in case and she allowed her arm to drop without protest, but the look on her face was sad. Walker had finished cleaning up the glass, but he didn’t come back over to us. He stood, looking toward me with tight lips and a furrowed brow.
The bees had revealed my biggest weakness. One I hadn’t really acknowledged to myself. Togetherness was terrifying. And if practicing Granny’s wildwood beliefs depended on me completely connecting with anyone or anything, then I was pretty sure I would fail.
Nine
Joyce Mayhew was a Sunday school teacher and a dear old friend of Granny’s. She was also famous or infamous—depending on who was doing the talking—for her dandelion wine. It was already warm on an early sunny Saturday morning in June when Granny woke me to help with the dandelion harvest.
“This is Joyce’s pet project and it’s as good a time as any for you to introduce yourself. She can be a little standoffish with outsiders. Best to jump right in. Show her what you’re made of,” Granny said from the doorway. “Normally I would help, but hours in a sunny field might be a little much for me today. Sadie will bring me by Joyce’s house later. I’ll help strip the petals and fill the fermenting crocks.”
