The History of Bees

Chapter 38 GEORGE

The hives were back in the field, in the grove and on the edges of the ditch where Tom clearly wanted them to be. Strictly speaking, he didn’t really want anything to do with them out here, either.

It was early morning and I was out in the field by the Alabast River. The sun was beating down on my white hat, my coveralls and net. I wore nothing underneath. Drops of sweat ran down my back, tickling until they reached the edge of my boxer shorts. Florida must be sheer hell now. God, how happy I was that we hadn’t decided on that.

Because the summer up here was plenty warm enough. The weather had been sensational during the past few weeks. Not a lot of rain. The bees flying in and out, in and out. Gathering nectar from the moment the sun came up until it disappeared in the field in the evening, right behind Gareth’s farm.

This was the best time. I was out with the bees a lot now. Took my time. Sometimes I just stood there studying how they danced. The movements back and forth, in which I wasn’t exactly able to discern any system, but I knew it was their way of telling one another about where the best nectar was: Now I’m fluttering my wings a little, moving to the right, then two steps to the left, and then a spin around and that means you have to fly past the big oak, up the small slope, over the stream, and there, my friends, there you’ll find the best patch of wild raspberries you could imagine!

That’s how they carried on. In and out, dancing for the others, searching, finding, bringing. And the hives grew heavier and heavier. Sometimes I tried to lift them, testing, assessing their weight, the honey that was already dripping inside. Golden, liquid money. Money for the down payment, money for the loan.

The hives had long since been expanded with honey supers. And now the task at hand was to prevent swarming, prevent the old queen from taking parts of the colony away with her to make room for a new queen and her offspring.

The field by the Alabast River was located far away from people, but I had nonetheless been summoned more than once to remove a swarm in a fruit tree, by angry fussbudgets with frightened children, who stood trembling inside with their noses pressed flat against the windows, while I shook and coaxed the swarm into a new hive. This kind of thing gave us a bad reputation, so I worked hard to avoid it. And the bees had a curious ability to find trees in people’s gardens, not just in God’s open nature, when they were taking a break while the scout bees were searching for a new home.

That’s why my head was down in the hives all the time, searching for swarm cells. If I detected the smallest sign, I squeezed them flat. And if I discovered larvae, there was nothing more to think about. The bee colony had to be divided up.

In some hives the urge to swarm was strong. I never found out why. It was a matter of replacing the queen, breeding from one of the best. Resisting the temptation to continue with the offspring of the swarming bees.

I’d already replaced most of the queens this year, but a few were allowed to live. Some faithful queens that continued to lay eggs for up to three years. Ideal queens. These were the ones I preferred to breed from.

I was standing beside one of them now. A pink hive, a conscientious bee colony. One of those that brought in the most nectar. Bees I could count on, that produced like crazy; the hive had already been expanded by two boxes this year. Two heavy boxes full of honey. I hadn’t been here for a week, had concentrated on hives in other places.

Tom was buzzing in my head. I didn’t look any closer at the flight board before removing the outer cover. We hadn’t heard from him. Nothing about the scholarship, nothing about what he was thinking in terms of his future. Or maybe he’d called and talked to Emma while I was out, without her mentioning it afterwards. I just waited. Maybe he was thinking through his options. No news was good news in a way. And he knew where to find me, it wasn’t as if the farm had grown wings and flown away.

Had I lost him?

I put the outer cover on the ground and only then did I come to and focus. Because the sound wasn’t the way it normally was, the way it should be. It was far too quiet.

I removed the insulation lining. Now I would definitely hear them soon.

I looked at the flight board, the opening.

No bees.

Then I looked down into the upper box. The food stores were fine. A lot of honey.

But where were they?

Maybe in the next box. Yes. They had to be there.

I removed the top one. My back complained. Remember to lift with your legs. I tried to take it easy. Put it carefully down on the grass, straightened up and looked down into the next box.

No. The brood box. They had to be in the brood box.

I quickly removed the queen excluder. The sun was directly above my head, illuminating the box below me.

Empty. It was empty.

There was plenty of brood, but that was it. Just a few recently hatched bees crawling around, without anyone to take care of them. Orphans.

At the very bottom I found the queen; she was marked, like all the queens, with a spot of turquoise paint on her back. Around her several young bees were gathered, the children. They weren’t dancing, were lethargic. Alone. Abandoned. Mother and children abandoned by the workforce. Abandoned by those who were supposed to take care of them. Abandoned to die.

I scanned the ground around the hive. But there were none there, either. They were simply gone.

I carefully put the queen excluder and boxes back in place. Noticed I was blinking rapidly. My hands shook, suddenly as cold as on a rainy autumn day.

I turned towards the hive next to this one. The flight board, the entrance to the hive, faced in the other direction, so I couldn’t see it, but I didn’t have to look to know what was waiting for me; it was way too quiet.

Not a trace of mites. No disease. No graveyard, no massacre, no corpses.

Just abandoned.

And the queen virtually alone down there, too.

My chest tightened. I hurried to replace the cover.

Opened the next one.

There was hope in my hands when they quickly removed the outer cover.

But no. The same thing.

Opened the next one.

The same.

The next one.

The next one.

The next one.

I looked up.

I looked at all of them, scattered out at varying distances. My hives. My bees.

Twenty-six hives. Twenty-six bee colonies. Gone.