The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (free ereaders txt) 📗

at bee forums, but everything he read made him feel worse. When he heard Alice’s truck descend the driveway, his stomach flipped over. He’d briefly considered not saying anything to her about the stricken queens. He didn’t know how long it would take her to notice—probably a few days. But he had quickly dismissed that thought. The longer he waited, the more likely the hives wouldn’t survive.

Alice banged through the door and threw her bag on the couch. “Hey, kid,” she said. “It smells great in here. I guess I’m off the hook for dinner again, huh?”

She smiled, and Jake hated himself for what he was about to tell her. “Hey, Alice. Good day?”

She gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah, you could say that. In a weird way,” she said.

When she came back into the living room in her overalls, Jake pulled out her beekeeping diary and put it on the table.

“Alice, I need to tell you something,” he said. “You’d better sit down.”

Quickly and succinctly, he told her about going into the new hives.

“Jesus! You what? How did you—” Her voice rose, and she gestured at his chair.

“Using a wheelchair doesn’t make me helpless, Alice,” he said quietly. “Now, if you would just hear me out.”

Her face grew red, and she apologized and nodded. Jake told her about hearing the queens in her new hives. He handed her the hive diary with his notes. He’d been as detailed as he could be, using her entries as a model: date, temperature, time of day, queen sightings, egg sightings. He had also drawn pictures to document what he’d seen—drone comb, pollen patterns, emerging larvae.

She nodded as she looked at the pages and turned them slowly. She put the notebook down.

“This is good work, Jake. The drawings are impressive too,” she said, and smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I didn’t mean to insult you. I just didn’t expect this. It’s really helpful, actually. Your records are amazing.”

Jake felt his shoulders relax. “You’re not mad?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not mad,” she said. “I think I’m replaced.”

She pushed the notebook across the table at him. “From now on, you’re in charge of the hive diaries.”

Jake glowed with joy and momentarily couldn’t speak. He didn’t know how to explain what he felt—that the bees were drawing him toward something new and wonderful. That feeling, that golden thrum in his core when he watched them, was something he’d never expected.

“There’s something else,” he said.

He told her about the G-sharp sound that he had distinguished over the tone of the rest of the hive. Alice looked confused and then astonished. He told her about the WSU researcher and showed her his notes on the topic in the diary. He felt like he was sharing his most precious secret with the one person who might understand.

“Ain’t that something?” she murmured, glancing at the pages and then looking up at him. “I wonder why they do that. You heard it every time, huh?”

Jake’s smile faded then. He looked out the window, then back to Alice, and told her about the ailing queens.

Alice’s face fell. She sighed and rose from her chair. “Let’s go check it out.”

In the apiary, Alice donned her hat, veil, and gloves. She looked surprised when Jake said he didn’t use them or the smoker.

“Okay. Whatever you say, kid.”

She gestured for him to open No. 23. His hands trembled at first, but he closed his eyes, took a few steady breaths, and went in as carefully as always. It didn’t take long to confirm what he had said. The queen in No. 23 wasn’t even moving anymore, and they couldn’t find the queen in No. 24.

“Dammit,” Alice said.

She thrust the notebook at him. “Queen failure. Write it down, just like that,” she said tersely. “For Hives Twenty-three and Twenty- four and the date.”

Jake felt sick as he wrote the notes.

“Those two will have to be re-queened right away, and the hives might fail anyway. They’re too young to make their own queen, so I’ll need to order a couple,” Alice said.

She took off her gloves, sat on the windbreak, and looked at him closely. “Hey, kid, don’t take it so hard. Sometimes that happens. My wrecking the truck couldn’t have helped. These two hives are young and will probably be just fine with new queens.”

Jake looked at her, his stomach in a knot. “So, I didn’t— You don’t think I did it? Hurt them, I mean.”

“Oh, no. Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “No—you didn’t hurt anything. I can see how careful you are. You have real talent with beekeeping. Going in bareheaded like that? And that sound thing? Damn, I’ve been doing this for years. I’m jealous, to be honest.”

Jake felt his body relax as his worry left him. He felt that golden buzz in his chest cavity, like he was a hollowed-out tree filled with a honeybee colony. This feeling had been growing in him, and he finally remembered what it was. He’d felt it the first day he woke up with Cheney in his room. He felt it when his mother bought him his first skateboard and when Noah had showed up to help him at Alice’s with no questions. And now with the bees. That feeling was just love. It was just everything. He held that knowledge in his heart, and he didn’t speak.

Alice glanced at her watch. “Harry should be here soon,” she said.

They moved along the west side of the bee yard past the older, well-established hives that were two or three brood boxes high. Though Jake had not been able to go into these hives, he had been monitoring the sounds of the queens. Now he was disturbed by what he didn’t hear. He stopped and put his hand on the closest hive.

“Alice,” he said. “I think we’d better check these.”

What they found inside those hives was a shocking and complete devastation. In five of Alice’s oldest hives, all the bees were dead or