The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  Taking his cue from Jake, he declined a hat and veil. So, when Alice opened the first hive and the guard bees flew gently up around his face, Harry yelped and slapped at them. The guard bees responded with a stress pheromone, and then Harry was under attack. He took off up the hill, with Cheney bounding after him.

  Alice eased the top of the hive back on and watched Harry disappear into the woods.

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, “my fault. You’ve clearly skewed my sense of newbies.”

  Jake grinned at her.

  “We’ll have to take things slowly with young Harry. If he ever comes back, that is,” she said.

  She sat on the windbreak and pulled out the hive diary to look at Jake’s notes again.

  “Count estimate,” she said, looking up at him. “Now, how did you figure that out?”

  Jake shrugged. “Just something I read on the Internet. You count the bees on either side of the middle frame and multiply it by ten for a week-old nuc hive.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I had some time on my hands,” he said, trying to sound casual.

  Alice flipped through the entries and came to the series of sketches again—bee bodies, wings, antennae, legs, and pollen baskets. The face of a bee emerging from its cell, the bee waggle.

  “Wow, kid! These are really good.”

  He shrugged, embarrassed.

  “No, really, Jake. This is great detail. I mean it. Now, tell me about the sound again.”

  This was a story he’d never tire of. Jake closed his eyes and described the thrum of a healthy hive and that magical queen song, that ringing G-sharp.

  “Show me,” Alice said.

  The two of them traveled a row of hives, and Jake paused by each one and sat with his eyes closed and his head cocked.

  “Queen,” he would say when he heard it.

  She believed him. Clearly this kid had some special talent with bees.

  “Come over here.” She strode toward the west edge of the field, toward the dead hives, and stopped at the row right before them, hives No. 7 through No. 12. She gestured down the row.

  “What about these?” she asked.

  Jake rolled down the row, listening.

  Seven, he nodded. Eight, he nodded again. Nine was fainter but he could hear it. At Ten he shook his head. Alice sighed and looked out toward Doug Ransom’s orchard and then back at the hives. She turned to Jake and smiled grimly.

  “Got any plans tomorrow night?” she asked.

  18

  Congregating

  Honey-Bees can flourish only when associated in large numbers, as in a colony. In a solitary state, a single bee is almost as helpless as a new-born child, being paralyzed by the chill of a cool Summer night.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  Life in a honeybee colony is ruled by the seasons. In summer, diligent field bees head out to forage as soon as the first rays of dawn warm the hive, and they work tirelessly into the cool hours of twilight. Fall foragers venture into wet woods and meadows between rain showers and blustery winds. Winter hives sit snow-covered and still until spring, when the bees break their tight cluster to take up their work again—cleaning the hive, building new comb, and gathering nectar and pollen to build the family up again.

  The lives of humans are similarly ordered, especially in a farming town like Hood River. Each spring, the citizens were drawn back outside into each other’s company. As the lilacs bloomed, snow melt swelled the river, and the days lengthened almost imperceptibly. People drew together with the sense of anticipation that only spring can summon. Even Alice, who enjoyed her solitude, felt the pull as she drove through town with Jake.

  They passed the library and saw that the parking lot was packed. The sandwich board on the sidewalk announced two simultaneous evening events: the Hood River Valley Beekeepers meeting and a live demo from “Karl the Snake Man.” Alice swore under her breath and circled the block again, glancing at Jake. Parking was something she hadn’t thought of.

  After Alice circled the building for a third time, Jake sighed and dug a skinny arm into his backpack. He pulled out a disabled placard and stuck it on the rearview mirror. He looked at Alice, his face impassive.

  “Let me help you out, Mrs. Holtzman,” he said. “I hate to see you walk too far, being so old and all.”

  “Oh, dear Harry,” Alice said, laughing as she pulled into a disabled parking spot by the front door. “He’s really one of a kind, isn’t he?”

  She knew Jake was referring to the previous evening. After Harry had returned from his sprint through the woods with Cheney trotting at his heels, he’d offered to meet the bees again, determined, it seemed, to redeem himself.

  Alice had shaken her head. “Tomorrow,” she said. “It’s getting dark. Let’s get you settled.”

  The young man looked so relieved she almost laughed.

  Alice led him to the small bunkroom in the barn that Buddy had built so many years ago for the nephews. It was simple but neat and had a small bathroom. With a pang she recalled the summer nights Ronnie, his brothers, and his cousins had spent there. There was a photo of Buddy on the wall, his arms draped around the nephews, each holding a fishing rod. Alice had taken the photo when the boys still had their baby faces. Even then, the resemblance between her nephews and her husband was uncanny. She turned away from the photo and the memories it threatened to trigger.

  The next day, she arrived home after work to find Harry in the barn. She noticed he had swept the shop floor and restacked the wood into a neat pile.

  “I see you are settling in,” she said. She wanted to thank him for tidying up, but the words stuck in her throat. It was just so jarring to see another person in Buddy’s space.

  “Hang on. I’ve got a project for you,” she said.

  She took a cart out to the apiary and retrieved the five now-silent hives. Jake, who was making notes in the hive diary, waved hello and followed her back to the barn.

  Alice set one of the brood boxes on the worktable. She glanced at the pegboard where Buddy’s tools hung. Among the dusty screwdrivers, pliers, and hammers was another photo—a faded snapshot of the two of them sitting on the front steps of the house their first summer together. Buddy had his big arm around Alice. Oh, how it had felt to lean into his shoulder. Safe. Loved. She forced her eyes away and opened the brood box for Harry.

  “This sticky stuff here is called propolis,” she said. “The bees gather it from trees to seal up all the cracks.”

  Harry nodded.

  “Some people call it Nature’s cement.”

  He didn’t say anything. The kid sure was quiet, she thought.

  Alice loosened a frame and pulled it free from the brood box. Her heart sank as she surveyed the devastation—eggs dried up in their cells, desiccated larvae, and full-grown workers hanging dead from the wax.

  No use being sentimental, she thought. “I want you to clean it all out,” she said.

  She demonstrated how to brush the adult bodies into a large plastic tub with a bee brush and then use the hive tool to scrape the wax into another.

  “I want loose bees in this first container and everything else in the second. All the wax and the eggs and larvae. Scrape it down to the foundation, okay?”

  She looked him in the eye, and he nodded.

  “Okay, Mrs. Holtzman,” Harry said.

  “Call me Alice, Harry,” she said. Her mother was Mrs. Holtzman. Or had been.

  Harry blushed and nodded. Nervous little rabbit, she thought. She passed the frame to him, and he took it gingerly with the tips of two fingers.

  “Don’t worry, kid. You won’t get stung. These bees are all dead,” she said.

  She was trying to lighten the mood, but she didn’t think it was funny, and she knew she sounded impatient. Harry reddened, and she felt bad. She glanced at Jake, who w
as watching the exchange. Harry was young, she thought, not much older than Jake, really. She should be more patient. She mustered a smile. “Got any questions, Harry?”

  He shook his head, and after an awkward silence, Alice turned to leave.

  “Okay,” she said. “Holler if you need anything.”

  “Do they always look like this after you take the honey out?” Harry blurted at her back.

  Alice turned around and looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The bees,” he said. “Do they always die when you take the honey? What did you call it—harvest?”

  She paused and took a deep breath. “No, Harry,” she said, her voice low. “I didn’t harvest the honey. This hive died.”

  Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Holtzman—I didn’t . . . ,” he stammered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Alice said. She gestured at the workbench. “Use anything you need in here, okay?”

  Harry nodded, looking around, and his eyes fell on the snapshot of her and Buddy.

  “Oh!” he said. “So this is your son’s shop?”

  The seconds ticked by as Alice stared at the photo. She was afraid to open her mouth and then decided she could trust herself to speak, if just. She shifted her gaze back to Harry.

  “No, that’s not my son,” she said slowly. “That is my late husband.”

  Harry’s face turned from white to pink and back to white. She looked at Jake, and he held her gaze. It was, after all, true. Bud Ryan was her late husband.

  “I’ll come check on you in a bit,” Alice said.

  She left the two young men in the barn and took a long walk along the fence line. She could feel the knot in her chest tighten, and she willed herself to inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale. She looked out at Doug Ransom’s orchard, where the trees tossed their frothy branches. The pain eased a notch, and she could breathe again. She let herself think of the photo of Buddy and the little boys. Such wonderful days past. She thought of her conversation with her nephew. Sweet Ronnie, it was clear, didn’t know what his father thought of Alice.

  The day Bud died last spring, Alice had watched Ron’s Jeep speed down the driveway toward her house. She wanted to go see his parents but hadn’t been able to move from the kitchen floor, where she collapsed after the two state troopers left.

  They told her the accident had taken place near Boardman. A car traveling east crossed the center lane and nearly collided with Bud, who was heading west toward home in his truck. Buddy swerved to avoid the car, smashed through the guardrail, and rolled into the slough. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The other driver was drunk, had previous DUIs, and would be prosecuted, the officers said. Their words sounded far away. Could they call anyone for her? She shook her head.

  She pulled herself off the floor when she heard the sound of Ron’s Jeep. He was coming to take her to the family, she thought. She walked out to meet him, her legs rubbery, the sunshine strangely cold on her scalp. Ron leapt out of the car and rushed at her.

  “It’s your fault!” he yelled, pointing at her, his hands shaking. “You told him to take that job. He would be alive if it wasn’t for you!”

  Alice heard his words like she was underwater and couldn’t speak. Buddy had been as excited as a little boy about the job with the big truck. The decision had been all his.

  Ron grabbed her by the shoulders like he wanted to hurt her and said terrible things. Go ahead, she thought, looking up at his contorted face. The worst has already happened. Ron pushed her away and doubled over. Alice reached out to comfort him, and he stumbled to the Jeep and roared off.

  Those memories rushed back, and Alice was afraid she would be overwhelmed, but she felt the limits of her sorrow then. She let herself relive the pain of that day, which included Ron. It was another loss both separate and part of losing Buddy. She felt that grief moving around inside her, and she knew her body could contain it. She was okay. It was going to be okay. Her sadness worked itself back down inside her into the safe place it needed to live when she was around people.

  Alice sat down on the windbreak and looked over the apiary and her remaining hives. This was her home, her place. A fierceness rose in her then, and she felt the urgency of protecting her honeybees. She pulled out the hive diary and jotted down some notes for the beekeepers meeting.

  By the time Alice returned to the barn, Jake had helped Harry clean out all the dead hives. She nodded at the material they had collected and examined the frames.

  “Nice work,” she said. She snapped the lids closed on the bins.

  “I need to bring these to the beekeepers meeting,” she said. “Harry, will you grab that one?”

  “Sure, Mrs.—er, Alice,” he said. “Let me carry that. It’s heavy, and you shouldn’t—”

  Wordlessly, she hefted the bin in her arms and strode to the truck. Harry trailed behind her with the other, and Jake followed, snickering.

  Now, in front of the library, Alice was surprised and grateful she could laugh about it. She glanced at Jake and noticed he was scanning the sidewalk nervously. She looked at the placard he had hung on the mirror, thinking it might have cost him something to pull it out. She was grateful he’d agreed to come, this surprising new ally. She jumped out of the truck and grabbed his chair from the back, set it next to the door, and waited while he maneuvered his way carefully down and settled himself in. She followed as Jake wheeled up the ramp in front of her and slapped the mechanical door control.

  Bee club members, mostly men, clustered along the hallway in twos and threes. Some of them knew Alice, and smiled and nodded. They looked at Jake with curiosity. She didn’t stop to talk to anyone. Many were farmers and orchardists, and some were hobbyists like her. There were a couple of large-scale beekeepers like Chuck Sauer, who was currently president of the bee association and also eternally crabby. He volunteered, not out of altruism but in an effort to keep the “idiot weekend farmers,” as he called them, from screwing up his commercial hives by spreading mites.

  Alice strode to the front of the room, where Chuck stood holding a clipboard and wearing a scowl.

  “Hello, Chuck,” she said.

  Chuck grunted.

  “I have an item for new business,” she said.

  Chuck peered down at her, stone-faced, and said the agenda had already been printed. She should have emailed him a week ago like the rules said.

  “I’m sure the members will want to hear what I have to say. And anyway, those rules about the agenda are yours. They aren’t written into our bylaws.”

  She waved her phone at him and read from the screen. “‘Any member can introduce significant new business at the end of the meeting with verbal notification to the president.’”

  Chuck’s frown deepened, and Alice thought of the wizened faces of the dolls her German grandmother once made using dried apples. He waved a hand.

  “Fine, Ms. Holtzman. I’ll add it on at the end. Please be ready with your commentary. We don’t want to waste people’s time,” he said, spitting his t’s.

  “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get started,” he said, striding away.

  Alice rolled her eyes at Jake, and the two of them sat near the front. Chuck thumped his fist on the podium to call the meeting to order and worked through the agenda with an almost military precision. Approval of last month’s minutes. Discussion of a club motto. Plans for the Fourth of July float. Alice checked her phone and glanced toward the door. She saw Stan Hinatsu slip in the back. He scanned the room and nodded when he saw her.

  The meeting dragged on as Chuck exhausted the discussion of the parade float beyond the tolerance of even the most patient. People were getting restless, and a few older members had already left, scraping their chairs back and talking loudly as they went.

  Finally, Chuck said, “Okay. That’s all for the official agenda. I have had a request to open the
floor to new business.”

  He glared at Alice and stalked off to the side of the room.

  Alice stood, took out her notebook, and walked behind the podium. She waved a hand at the room.

  “Um, hi, everybody. Most of you know me. I’m Alice Holtzman. I’ll make this quick, but I know you are going to want to hear what I have to say.”

  Her voice quavered, and she glanced down at her notes. Her hands shook, and she balled them into fists.

  “I’ve been a member of the bee club for nine years, and I currently have twenty-four hives in the south valley.”

  People had begun standing and talking as they moved to leave. Alice raised her voice to be heard.

  “Yesterday, following a routine inspection, I found that five of my hives were dead. They were the five oldest of the twenty-four.”

  Chuck was putting his notes in his bag, rustling his papers loudly.

  “The five most robust hives,” Alice said. Her voice dropped.

  Five hives. What was she saying? She saw Jake glancing around the room. Conversations grew louder. Chuck guffawed at something the guy next to him said. They weren’t listening. What did it matter? Five of her hives were dead. How are your bees, Auntie? Ronnie had asked. It’s your fault, Ron said. Bud Ryan was her late husband. She was Alice Island. Then she heard her mother’s voice, impatient and snappish in her head.

  “Alice Marina Holtzman! Stand up straight and stop mumbling!”

  Alice came back to herself. Then it was her own voice she heard.

  “Hey! You guys in the back! I have the floor. So either get out or sit down and be quiet!”

  The room fell silent. Chuck Sauer sat. Those who had been clustered in the hallway drifted in to stand in the back, their arms crossed.

  “Thank you,” Alice said. She closed her notebook and came out from behind the podium. Her voice was steady.