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

could rearrange it however he saw fit, and it looked nice and tidy, by the way. He was welcome in the house when he wasn’t working. She’d like him to take over table setting and dishes. He could use the computer. He could use the washer and dryer. But he had to stop apologizing every time he opened his mouth. If he didn’t stop doing that, she was going to have to ask him to leave. Jake knew this last part was a joke, but Harry didn’t.

“Okay, Mrs.—I mean, Alice. I’m sorry— I didn’t—” he stammered, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

Alice’s laugh rang in the rafters. “Don’t worry, Harry. I’ll give you that one for free. Now come in for dinner.”

Now at the breakfast table with Harry, Jake pulled out the hive diary and told him about how the newest hives were developing. Harry had spent several days just catching up on maintenance around the farm for Alice. Now she wanted him to build brood boxes with top entrances for half of the newest hives so she could track their progress and compare them to the other hives with traditional bottom entrances.

Harry nodded. “I’m building the first ones today,” he said. “For Hives Thirteen through Eighteen.”

Out in the barn, Harry flipped on the shop lights. Jake rolled up to the workbench and pulled down one of the empty brood boxes onto his lap and flipped it over.

“So how are you going to do the top entrances, exactly?”

Harry explained how he would construct the new brood boxes like the old ones, only the entrance would be at the top. He pointed to Alice’s sketch of what she wanted.

“I need to cut top entrances on the new boxes and then router out the ledges for the frames to hang on.”

“They’re called rabbets,” Jake said, showing off. “The ledges.”

“Oh. Rabbets. Okay, then I guess Alice is going to move the frames into the new boxes and use the same covers and everything?”

“You don’t sound so sure, man,” Jake said.

Harry’s brow furrowed. “I think that’s what she said?”

“I’m kidding, Stokes! Yeah, we’re going to transfer the frames. Then we’ll turn the old boxes into upper brood boxes. So you’ll have to block the old entrances and add the rabbets to those?”

“Yeah, I’ll need to make sure the frames hang right in those to . . . ,” Harry said.

He put down the brood box on the workbench and stared at it. Then he went outside to look at the hives, then came back and looked at the brood box, mumbling to himself.

Jake watched him.

“Hand me that cover, would you, Jake?”

He passed the cover to Harry, who continued to murmur to himself. He flipped the box over and put the top on, then poked a finger underneath the ridge to measure the space left there. He grabbed a tape measure from the bench and tucked it into the gap.

“What’s bee space again? Half an inch?”

Jake shook his head. “Three-eighths.”

Harry straightened and grinned. He pointed at the brood box. “One down and five to go,” he said, grinning.

Jake looked at him, puzzled. Harry showed him the tape measure.

“There’s enough room for the entrance under the telescoping cover. And the rabbets are built into these boxes already. They’re reversible. All we have to do is flip them upside down, and voilà, the bottom entrance is the top!”

Jake looked at the box, and his understanding dawned. “That’s another one for Stokes! Working smarter, not harder!”

He high-fived Harry and rolled back, looking at the brood box.

“We’ll still need to transfer the frames,” Jake said, his enthusiasm rising. “If we put the frames from Hive Thirteen in this one, then we can flip that brood box and transfer the frames from Hive Fourteen and so on. Super easy,” he said.

These young hives, still only one brood box tall, remained accessible to him. He could do this on his own. He knew he could.

“I think I could change them all out this morning,” he said, talking more to himself than to Harry. “I just need to put this one like this, and the other one like—”

He took an empty frame and moved it through the air, trying to sketch the workflow of the transfer from the side of his chair. But it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t lean over two hives placed side by side on his right. And he didn’t have the muscle strength to work one on his left side. Jake felt the bitter edges of his physical limitations then.

He let out a short, unhappy laugh. “Well, fuck. I can’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Reach over two box lengths. Or over my lap. It’s too far and—”

He tried to laugh it off and turned the frame over and over in his hands. But this was it, he knew. He had reached the end of his time with the hives. These new ones would get their second brood boxes by next week, and they would be too tall for him to work. He couldn’t do this last goddamn thing. Disappointment rose in his throat and choked him.

“There’s bee space, and then there’s Jake space. It’s fine. I just—Fuck!”

He threw the frame, which bounced off the shop floor and landed near the snoring dog. Cheney jumped up and slunk out of the barn with a hurt look.

Harry was watching him, perplexed.

Just like my dad, Jake thought. I’m such an asshole. He pushed his chair after the dog, but Cheney had trotted out of sight. He sighed and spun his chair to face Harry.

“Sorry, man. It’s just . . . frustrating. I thought I could, but we’ll have to wait for Alice. Still, she’ll be really psyched that you figured out how to reverse them. Nice job, Harry.”

Harry was staring at a spot just over Jake’s shoulder and mumbling to himself. He stretched his arms out on either side of him.

“—To be able to slide under it. That’s fourteen times two, which is only twenty-eight. Not so bad,” he muttered.

“Hold your hands out,” he commanded.

Jake complied, and Harry stretched