The day after Paige’s birth, Joan informed her bees that she and Norman had a healthy granddaughter. Telling the bees about major family events was an old folk custom that kept the bees from swarming, lowering productivity, becoming sick or aggressive, and dying; the folklore that said which benefit varied regionally. Through her life, Joan tried to find out what telling the bees prevented. She thought the custom inexplicably benefited bees.

Weaning sent Paige into anaphylactic shock—she was allergic to onions, garlic, and other alliums. She suffered mild to moderate allergic reactions from direct contact with alliums, either edible or decorative. But eating them was potentially lethal.

Her grandmother, Joan, told the bees about her hospitalization and her recovery. Then many times through Paige’s life, the bees learned of her allergic reactions.

Paige spent school day afternoons with Joan and her grandfather, Norman, while her parents worked. Joan found ways to protect her from allium residue; Paige ate honey made from allium pollen with no reaction, but the bees left particles behind, and beekeepers rarely needed Joan’s stock of bee protective clothing. Joan warned her hired beekeepers about Paige’s allergy. Joan banned her bees from pollinating alliums and they obeyed.

Joan gave Paige a beehive for Christmas, though her mother, Melanie, insisted Paige’s hive live on Joan’s land. Paige painted flowers on it.

Beginning with Paige’s colony, Joan told the bees why Paige would not work with them for the foreseeable future. Thousands of bees swarmed out and buzzed anxiously; most worker bees already foraged elsewhere.

“Which mood is it?” Emma asked, walking up the path. Emma, Joan’s summer employee, recognized normal buzz, angry buzz, and cold buzz.

“Anxious, but now sad.” Joan’s hands were clasped behind her back, indicating she told the bees something.

“Why?”

Joan explained Paige’s condition in more detail to Emma than to the listening bees.

Melanie and Paige’s father (who divorced over problems stemming from Melanie’s hatred of Joan’s bees) refused to take Paige out to eat. For her eleventh birthday, she wanted to eat at a restaurant, more than anything else her family offered. Following weeks of arguing, her parents and grandparents grudgingly searched for a safe restaurant.

Joan sold honey to the owner of a local restaurant, Ross Andrews, and she recommended him. She and Melanie inspected it. Ross strictly and aggressively followed laws regarding the fourteen major allergens, so he seemed able to manage Paige’s rare allergy. As a favor to Joan, Ross personally supervised Paige’s meal on her birthday—he avoided being sued, he wanted repeat customers, and he felt sorry for Paige.

Paige was fine. She loved the meal, which agreed with her. Her parents promised to return.

Next time, though her parents suggested she eat the same thing she ordered before, Paige wanted to try something new. According to the normal recipe, the dish’s onion was mingled with other ingredients. The food tasted new, which she wanted. Her parents’ meals lovingly tended towards the cautious, reliable, and boring side.

Paige ate part of her meal before developing symptoms. Quickly, she went into anaphylactic shock and from a lack of oxygen, suffered brain damage. She relapsed.

Later in the day, most of Paige’s bees found Joan and Emma. They arranged themselves into Paige’s face.

“What about Paige?” Joan asked the bees.

The illiterate bees formed one of the patterns Joan routinely taught her bees: the cursive word ill. Normally, Emma justified the synchronized flying as pareidolia, but they formed very clear, purposeful patterns to certain people.

“Paige is ill,” Joan said. “And you can do nothing for her, but she will be all right. We have lots of work around the apiary. Let’s press on.”

The bees dispersed. To Emma, their body language seemed sympathetic, and, weirdly, the total effect of their body language and buzzing reminded her of children after a schoolyard fight.

Joan acknowledged that her bees behaved abnormally. She hid their behavior from most people, even beekeepers; Joan’s family and Emma were informed people.

Promptly, Ross investigated the cause of Paige’s reaction. He grated against one of the chefs, who ignored him at every opportunity. Further, the chef was skeptical that every so-called allergic person requesting changes to a dish legitimately was allergic. The irritated chef cooked Paige’s meal.

Therefore, Ross fired the cook, wrote a strongly-worded letter of condemnation (just in case the chef asked for a reference), and apologized to Paige’s family. Melanie sued Ross’s restaurant. Ross immediately agreed to settle the suit, though he hated the prospect and thought that the cook, rather than his restaurant, was the problem.

The queen bee wanted to find Paige and her attacker, whom the queen bee thought were in the same place. Generations of queen bees passed down knowledge. In this case, the queen bee thought because attackers of bees came to the beehive, attackers of humans went to the humanhive.

Scout bees peeked through the cottage’s windows, hoping to find Paige. Then the queen bee sent a scout bee escort wherever Joan went. The queen bee expected Joan to eventually lead the scout bees to Paige.

Joan considered herself too old to drive; five minutes after she began driving, the passengers agreed with her. So, Emma drove Joan in her old pickup to buy supplies or make deliveries. Joan asked Emma to drive her to Ross’s restaurant. She normally canceled orders over the phone or through email, but the unusual circumstances warranted an in-person cancellation.

“The lawyer said we ought not to contact Ross, and Melanie won’t drive me,” Joan said.

“Will you get into trouble?” Emma normally left uncomfortable situations, worried they might get her into trouble.

“Oh, no,” Joan said, waving the thought aside. “I simply shan’t sell honey to Ross.”

Emma thought of a good reason to refuse. “What about the police?”

“Thankfully, she won’t die, or they would investigate,” Joan said.

“And you won’t threaten Mr. Andrews or something?”

“Vengeance isn’t Christian.”

That seemed like a good trouble preventative and Emma agreed. She thought the unfamiliarity of her current situation made her uncomfortable.

Joan’s hearing aid blocked out the sound of bees buzzing onto her hat and off it and towards the restaurant. She wore false flowers in her hat to shelter bees from the elements, and in her purse she carried an emergency vial of water and another of sugar syrup.

While waiting for Joan, Emma read Joan’s extensive apiary notes. Anything else felt lazy and the notes interested her mildly. She liked her job, Joan, and Norman; Paige annoyed her a little bit, and some days she disliked Melanie. Apiculture appealed to Emma more than the few other jobs sporadically available.

Also, Melissa (Joan and Norman’s daughter and Melanie’s half-sister) paid Emma to tend her bees year-round and mail her the produce every autumn. Melissa lived in Arizona, a climate capable of scorching the dark European honey bees, so Joan put Melissa’s bees next to Paige’s hive. Melissa’s bees showed the same odd traits as Joan and Paige’s.

Emma noticed the fuzzy brown scout bees flying hastily back to the pickup.

“A couple scout bees want to talk to you,” Emma said. “Behind you.”

Joan turned around. “Did you wish to show me something?”

The bees flew side-to-side, meaning no, then buzzed towards Joan’s hat.

“Are they aboard?” Joan bent her head towards Emma.

“Yeah,” Emma said.

“Funny bees wanted an outing,” Joan said, lovingly. “But curious they came on a rainy day. We must bring them back on a nice day. Perhaps they wanted out of the rain today, but want to show me something later.”

Joan had a bad rheumatic day and the trip wore her out; she dozed in a garden chair with a blanket and hot water bottle. In such circumstances, Emma maintained the hives independently, but because Emma was a minor, Joan supervised with a walkie-talkie. Emma considered it silly. When Emma and Joan worked on different acres, Emma rarely asked her a difficult question over the walkie-talkie or for help in person. She had more experience than most other beekeepers Joan trained.

Emma noticed nothing unusual about the bees, or at least, nothing identifiable. Daily, large numbers of bees practiced pictures or synchronized flying and it could be confusing to humans. It made perfect sense to bees and was part of their extraordinary behavior. She re-checked the practicing bees regularly because the bees figured out how to communicate their problem. Whenever Emma approached Paige’s bees, she had the impression they were Behaving Themselves, like cheaters when a teacher looked over. Emma never saw a specific shape or a fragment, just lines, swirls, and blobs, which faded as she watched.

The weather improved and Joan felt much better. She went to the apiary shed every morning to prepare for the day. Technically, her entire farm was an apiary, but “apiary shed” or “apiary” referred to a specific outbuilding, distinct from “the shed,” which tidily held equipment, supplies, tools, and the like, with plenty of space for Joan’s bee extraction gear and building hives. She stopped extracting bees long ago and building hives several years ago.

The shed came with the farm, but Norman wanted Joan to have a nicer outhouse. The apiary was somewhere between a business office and study and contained everything Joan needed to sell honey, from packing to planning. It also housed her extensive books and notes. She processed honey and beeswax in an adjoining room. That year, Joan stopped selling propolis, royal jelly, and other products.

Paige’s bees hovered outside the glass and several tapped on it in unison to attract her attention, so Joan went outside.

“Now you had something to tell me?” Joan asked the bees.

Just then, Emma came round the side of the pastel pink apiary shed. Slowly, the swarm formed Ross’s face and a simple flower pattern: a five-pointed blossom, a couple of pointed leaves, and a cluster of circles. She recognized the deadly nightshade symbol from Joan’s Bee Phrasebook. Joan described and photographed it, but now Emma saw it live for the first and only time. According to Joan, bees collected pollen of some poisonous plants, ate the resulting honey, and were fine; the honey caused plenty of harm to people. As far as Emma knew, bees (other than Joan's) had absolutely no idea that certain plants poisoned humans. So, Joan taught her bees about local poisonous plants, including ones which made bees sick.

“No, no poisoned honey,” Joan said, resisting the urge to flap the bees away, since, understandably, the sweetest bee hated being hit and felt quite insulted and possibly threatened. “We can’t poison him. Vengeance isn’t Christian. Now stop it! Don’t make honey from deadly nightshade. Shoo!”

The bees’ shapes disappeared and the swarm flew to the hive.

Joan turned to return to the apiary shed and saw Emma. “Did you see them?” Joan asked.

“Was that Mr. Andrews’ face?” Emma asked.

“Yes, I believe it was,” Joan said, flustered. “But I told them not to hurt him. And they listen to me.”

“It looked like him and deadly nightshade.”

“And I’ve warned them about such clear pictures."

“Did he poison Paige?”

“She had an allergic reaction to onions. And I told them not to hurt him.”

Emma did not want to assume Mr. Andrews' face and deadly nightshade held together meant poison him, but if Joan believed it, she was prepared to. She asked, “Should we warn him?”

“They listen to me, and he might think it a threat,” Joan said. “I’d tell the police, but they don’t believe bees premeditate murder.”

"A policeman might need to see the bees’ patterns to believe it. What happens when forensics trace the bees to you?”

“The bees shan’t kill Ross.”

“How do you know?”

“They don’t know his address, and their little wings would give out. You needn’t worry yourself about Ross. I must speak to Norman quickly, but you can begin work.”

Norman comforted Joan. In his experience, the bees obeyed Joan. He agreed that the bees were intelligent and emotional—certainly good planners and able to attack other bees and honey eaters—but he thought premeditated murder was too complicated and human.

Part 2 coming November 27, 2023.

The sight of the bees forming Ross’s face and deadly nightshade unnerved Emma. Prior to witnessing it, Emma assumed Joan exaggerated her bees’ picture-making skills, and Emma adjusted to it. Forming Ross’s face was extraordinary. To productively procrastinate in the apiary, she dusted and swept, and waited for Joan to find her.

The first year Emma worked at the apiary, Joan said that she had a weird array of precocious bee colonies, but loved them too much to alert scientists, who would take them away or interrupt their work. Joan quickly decided Emma was the right kind of person to keep her bees. Most other beekeepers were best suited to normal bees.

Upon hiring Emma, Joan said that only certain people, especially children, could see the bees’ shapes. Paige said that unimaginative adults outgrew it, which Emma wanted to believe. Emma wondered if some adults were children at heart.

“Why can they do that?” Emma asked.

“Do what?” Joan asked.

“Make faces.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. We shan’t collect any honey from their hive this year, and next year, we must destroy the comb and honey. Too late in the year to do it now.” Joan got out her bee genealogy book and sat down.

“Did they come from a testing facility or something?”

“The bees simply became more intelligent over the years. But I’m glad you saw them and you can help me watch for funny honey.” Joan sighed. “They don’t understand Paige’s situation. It is a bit beyond them, to be honest. Please, don’t tell Melanie about them. She has enough to worry about, and you’ve probably noticed by now she doesn’t particularly like bees.” Joan worried about being a dotty old lady whose children would take her beloved colonies away and send her to a home. Ross’s face agitated her concerns. She said, “And I just need to check the colony’s family tree.

Emma proceeded with her normal work as Joan searched her genealogical records, which, especially regarding her own bees, rivaled Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage. She and her younger daughter, Melissa, tracked hive queens as thoroughly as European royalty monitored each other’s successions. They even tracked down the bees she sold, but generally, investigating their offspring required a time machine. Many died without swarming. Joan spread out several of her other books, binders, and notebooks and continued researching.

“Do you know about my first husband?” Joan asked when Emma returned to the shed.

“Mum said not to mention him unless you did,” Emma said.

“Paige's bees trace back to a swarm from a particular hive. The hive had the same queen during the swarm and when the bees murdered Clarence."

Joan was born in a small row house with a garden too small and shadowy for a victory garden. Her parents kept a beehive to support the war effort. The queen bee filled the hive with normal, hardworking, healthy bees. Pollinating bees were essential for proper agriculture in the best or worst outcome of the War; Joan’s family’s bees might not have routinely reached the countryside, but families planted gardens across town and might already tend orchard trees. Later, Joan wondered if her bees traveled the maximum distance to do their bit. She spent most of her childhood under sugar rationing, but due to the family beehive, she or one of her siblings took turns having a birthday cake.

Soon after sugar rationing ended, Joan’s parents intended to stop beekeeping, but they let Joan maintain the hive herself. She sold honey and wished for more space. But her descendants of wartime bees seemed happy in the cramped garden. As a teenager, Joan must have noticed clever, storybook-like bees. Their intelligence and emotional microevolution were probably unobservable outside a laboratory. Shortly before Joan met Clarence, she noticed her bees were particularly vivacious compared to other beekeepers’ and she wondered if loving the bees biased her.

Even though Clarence despised bees and considered honey disgusting, he tolerated bees for Joan’s sake and admitted the world needed pollinators. He was not scared of bees and avoided them like they were a dog’s mess. Joan and Clarence loved each other anyway and married. When Joan told the bees, she gave them a slice of wedding cake. Clarence considered it and her many folksy ways silly, but he rarely outwardly objected to them. He gravitated towards the modern, developed world.

When Joan became pregnant with Melanie, Clarence vetoed the name Melissa—Joan excitedly pointed out the etymology before she stopped herself—and, therefore, he and Joan compromised with Melanie. Joan warned the bees when contractions began. She doubted Clarence intended to tell the bees on her behalf, but she visited the bees daily and the long interruption might discombobulate them like the rare days she felt too sick to notify them.

Clarence and Joan bought a house with a larger garden and he built a wooden fence around Joan’s bee yard and gave her a corner of the cellar. She kept three hives. She struggled to acquire books and scholarly bee research. The scientific articles baffled her and she had little opportunity to study science.

Joan sold the excess honey and harvested more beeswax than she needed or could give away. Concerning beeswax, she was more likely to break even than profit. Clarence discouraged her from expanding the bee business, or trying to sell the excess beeswax, or spending money on processing the disturbing beeswax. She sold bees, to his relief. Her bees evolved to the point Joan worried her sold bees alarmed beekeepers. Along with normal quarantine practices, she blocked their convenient view of other bees with a muslin screen.

Joan longed to expand the bee business somehow and suggested building hives. However, she needed to learn the necessary carpentry skills (Clarence refused to teach her), he disliked people borrowing his tools and deemed another set too expensive, and the idea was a probably an unprofitable, expensive venture. Then Joan suggested a cookbook—knowing full well that Clarence objected to honey-contaminated food since only she and sometimes Melanie ate it. Finally, Joan suggested renting hives to farmers. The hives spent the growing season on the farmer’s land and in the garden through the winter, when nobody bothered with the garden. However, Clarence refused. In his opinion, Joan had more worthwhile activities than bee enterprises and Joan considered herself capable of both.

Over the generations, the bees began to respond to her, and she thought they understood some of what she said. They coordinated their flying into shapes and pictures. She considered herself incapable of experimenting on the bees. When Joan showed Melanie the pretty pictures, the bees scared Melanie. Joan expected it to appeal to children. She habitually did not tell Clarence bee matters, but this time, she needed to tell him. He declared the whole idea ridiculous and that Joan made up a nice story upon which Melanie’s imagination expanded.

To read, think, nap, or have some time to herself undisturbed, Joan sat in the bee yard. Her bees required less attention than Clarence thought. Often, she vented in a whisper to the bees—nobody could read it in her diary, overhear her because nobody else went near the bees, and there were no worries of spreading gossip or leading to a petty quarrel.

Melanie agreed with her father’s bee opinions more than Joan’s, possibly because Joan rarely contradicted Clarence. Keeping her opinions and facts to herself was easier and better for a good home life. She and Clarence usually had a good, peaceful home and a happy marriage, tensions arose from the bees.

Clarence gradually noticed the bees’ extraordinary behavior, hence Joan’s insistence they reveal themselves privately to select people. He thought it best Joan got rid of all her bees and, since he long ago resigned himself to her bees, begin again with a fresh strain. Knowing extermination distressed Joan, he suggested sending them to the government. The bees absconded and Joan spent several days searching for them and reassuring them of their safety. It convinced Clarence they needed to stay—he dreaded freaky bees swarming the countryside. Also, he insisted Joan stop selling swarms; she cooperated. She never sold swarms again.

Bee issues and their influence on other issues grew worse, but Clarence and Joan tried to work them out. Neither considered divorce. In her head, never to the bees, Joan wondered if she ought to exterminate the hives. Melanie and the bees seemed aware of the problems. As much as Joan and Clarence comforted Melanie, Joan theoretically comforted the bees.

One Sunday, Clarence was sick. Joan and Melanie walked to church and he stayed home. Joan finished cooking lunch and sent Melanie to find Clarence. Melanie found her father stung to death by bees. She screamed and cried incoherently, prompting Joan to search for her husband, still in his pajamas. Thousands of dead and dying honeybees surrounded and covered him. The garden hose continued running. It tangled around his legs and the medical examiner determined it tripped him. The medical examiner found bees in his ears, nose, and throat and stings directly on his eyeballs and tongue.

However, Joan had taught Clarence to defend himself from attacking honeybees.

The medical examiner called Clarence’s death an accident. Joan confessed to the police her bees had killed him. She could not prove it, except for a mostly empty hive from which she did not expect a swarm, but the police named her bees as the most likely suspect and that it was an accident. Joan wished the bees communicated more coherently to humans—the queen bee knew why the bees swarmed. She certainly never asked the bees to kill anybody, let alone want Clarence dead. Perhaps he provoked them. Just in case they attacked first, Joan banned stinging people to death.

Promptly, Joan euthanized the colony. Because the colonies which swarmed from it had not hurt anybody, she left them alone.

Joan brought a bit of funeral biscuit to the hives and draped them in black cloth. Sneakily at night, Melanie attempted to knock off the biscuits and tear down the cloth. Every flying bee flew far from the beehives; Melanie believed they intended to sting her to death. She ran to the house.

Then Joan bought her farm and a tractor and increased her bee business while working in town. Carefully, she placed the hives out of sight of the cottage and road. Bright violet fences marked a boundary beyond which she allowed synchronized flight only in emergencies.

Joan met Norman and quickly, she showed him the bees. Norman bolted into her apiary shed, but he met Joan halfway up the path. He apologized for his rudeness to Joan and the bees. Soon, Joan and Norman married. He and Joan brought a slice of wedding cake to the bees. While Joan recovered from delivering Melissa, he personally informed the bees.

Norman wanted Joan to keep bees if she liked it, and so she proceeded with her bee enterprises. He helped her in his spare time. People were familiar with Auntie Joan and her delicious honey and precious bees. She wished they called Norman Uncle Norman, but people practically ignored him; he did not mind.

For decades, Joan rented hives to farmers. Their crops noticeably benefited from her bees, and to a certain extent, the bees avoided cross-pollination. She positively forbade rented bees to make shapes under any circumstances. Melanie doubted they followed her instructions. Still, Joan never received a complaint or heard, “I think I almost saw the bees doing the oddest thing…” While collecting a swarm, Joan fell and the farmer helped her up approximately an hour later, wondering what took so long. Meanwhile, outside Norman’s office window, a swarm of bees bumped gently against the glass to get his attention. He followed it in the direction of the farm. Joan stopped renting hives. It explained why Joan told Emma, if a swarm of honeybees were in an unlikely new hive site, to follow the bees.

Local people believed from sheer lack of evidence that Joan’s bees were normal bees who made good honey, guaranteed to taste exactly as the pink and brown label said. Artisans ranked her pure beeswax among the best. Oddly, Joan refused to enter competitions; she said she was not competitive enough, but she also thought her honey was average.

Thanks to Joan’s bee-decline awareness pamphlets, school talks, and giveaway bee habitats, native bees repopulated the village and neighboring areas. They were perfectly normal, like the wild bees in Joan’s previous homes.

Nobody (or, at least, cynically theorizing, nobody other than Melanie, who would rather become a nude, avant-garde, interactive, eventually deadly public art installation than imply Joan’s bees were unusual) said, “Be nice to Auntie Joan or a bee will sting your eyeball.”

“Why are the bees protecting Paige?” Emma asked.

“They love her,” Joan said. Looking through her notebooks and books, she said, “And ones in that hive are hers, but her mum doesn’t want people to see them. But I heard Paige repeat Anglo-Saxon bee charms as she played outside. But who knows what else she said.”

“Magic isn’t real.”

“But the bees believe what they are told. I thought they were like nursery rhymes for bees, but children believe nursery rhymes as well. Here ’tis. Two charms for swarming bees, but the bees wouldn’t know its purpose.” Joan read the English translation of the first charm:

“’I take under foot, I have found it.

Verily earth avails against every creature,

And against mischief and mindlessness,

And against the great tongue of man.’”

“Paige memorized that?” Emma asked, skeptically.

“Or she substituted words quite close. She enjoys old books,” Joan said, and read the second translated charm.

“’Sit ye, victor-dames, sink to earth,

Never to fly wild to the wood!

Be as mindful of my good

As every man is of food and estate.’”

“How do they know it’s about bees?” Emma asked.

“They know when we speak to them,” Joan said.

Joan, Paige, and Emma talked to the bees and she and the beekeepers talked to each other. Emma considered a one-sided conversation with insects silly until she started. In addition to Joan’s wealth of bee folklore, stories, songs, quotations, and facts, on boring drudgery days, she reminisced about her family, sang songs, and told stories. She memorized some of it, promised it on their breaks if they worked quickly, or, when feeble, read aloud from her garden chair. Otherwise, unless it disturbed the bees, they listened to music, audiobooks, and the radio.

“Your bees swarm,” Emma said.

“Yes, but they always return or tell me they require a new hive. But they could have misinterpreted the words. My bees pass down information through the generations, or they might have understood enough to misinterpret it. My bees understand more than they communicate, like babies.”

Emma did not believe Joan’s full explanation. However, Emma certainly believed the bees wanted to murder Mr. Andrews and that Joan worried deeply. Joan’s worry scared Emma. And she did not want to be around murderous bees, but Joan did not seem worried for her and Emma’s safety. If she was, she would send Emma home or give her extremely specific instructions.

“Why don’t you go home until all this is sorted out?” Joan asked.

“You have a stressful time and a lot to do, so I want to help,” Emma said.

“Very sweet. Thanks. But if the bees scare you, you can leave. And, of course, come back to work when it is all sorted.”

“I’m all right.”

“And you can change your mind.”

“Thanks.”

Throughout the day, Emma considered quitting her job, but Joan might be too old to handle the situation and Norman was in a wheelchair. After discovering Norman’s body, Melanie might be too scared; Emma wondered if her trauma caused her hatred of bees, and so it now seemed a reasonable opinion.

Every effort has been made to find Anglo-Saxon charm translations in the public domain. If copyright law has been violated, please contact the author and the copyrighted content will be removed. The charms come from Translations from Old English Poetry. Translated and edited by Albert S. Cook and Chauncey B. Tinker. Ginn & Company: Boston, New York, Chicago, London, 1902. Page 167. Sourced from the Internet Archive, archive.org/details/selecttranslatio0000albe_y1i1/mode/1up. 11 November 2022. Online.

Part 3 coming December 4, 2023.

The queen bee dispatched thousands and thousands of honeybees to sting Ross to death for attacking Paige. The bees traveled slowly, stopping frequently to eat nectar and pollen or drink at the river. They spent the night in a hollow tree. The bees intended to reach the restaurant the next day, but Ross biked past them. As the bees chased him, he called Joan, the local bee authority.

Joan dressed quickly, hurried to the bee shed for a bee suit, and checked on Paige’s hive.

Upon opening the hive, Joan estimated 20,000 bees were chasing Ross, and the present bees buzzed irritably. The bee queen scuttled into a corner. Joan placed her inside the jar, which had holes punched in the lid.

Several dozen bees flew from the hive and landed on Joan’s hands.

“Did you send bees to sting Ross?” Joan asked.

The queen bee flew up and down steadily, a positive answer.

As soon as Joan unscrewed the lid, the bees flew from her hands.

Approximately 40,000 bees followed Joan to the cottage but hovered outside. Joan prohibited bees inside the cottage. In order of against whom the bees were most likely to hold a grudge, Joan worried about Melanie, Emma, Norman, Paige, herself, and anybody else who interfered with the bees. Joan’s bees defined “interfering” as “anything humans do to the hive,” but, on account of the benefits and stability, they tolerated the humans’ ignorance of proper hives and colonies.

Joan required an informed person of an age of majority to drive the pickup. She called Melanie, the closest suitable person, saying there was a rather serious, peculiar bee emergency. Then Joan called Emma to warn her the bees were chasing Ross and, in case the bees threatened any human, Joan canceled the day’s usual work.

Melanie hurried to Joan’s cottage, bringing along anti-bee weapons from her attic, while Joan collected her things and Ross hid from the bees in a petrol station restroom. On the drive, Joan explained the situation to Melanie. Ross listened over the phone and updated them about the bees.

“We need to kill the bees,” Melanie snapped.

“Once we rescue Ross, the swarm will go home,” Joan said, already preparing to exterminate them before they found another way to kill Ross.

“The swarm will follow him,” Melanie said.

“But Ross will come to my cottage and the bees will want to rest their weary exoskeletons in their hive.”

“When do we trap them?”

“We shan't discuss it here.”

“Why? Because the bees might overhear?” Melanie asked, rolling her eyes.

Melanie sarcastically identified the real reason. Joan thought the bees understood speech enough to report extermination plans existed. She said, “We need to rescue Ross first.”

“Killing the bees will rescue him,” Melanie said.

“I agree with Melanie,” Ross said.

“We shall do one thing at a time and we need time indoors, in the same room, to gather our thoughts,” Joan said.

“Oh, we have two thoughts between the three of us. Kill the bees or let them kill Ross,” Melanie said.

The bees examined the petrol station for entrances and coincidentally blocked the automatic doors, which they thought were windows. How humans entered the hive baffled them. Other customers drove away to a different petrol station or else the bees would have learned to activate the doors.

Joan sucked the bees into her bee vacuum, then emptied the bees into a swarm box with a plugged hole cut in the top. She blocked the entrance, placed a funnel into the hole, and Melanie gleefully flooded the hive with gallons of soapy water, drowning the bees.

The extermination saddened Joan, but she believed it was right and necessary. Ross wanted to know why she tricked the bees and Joan promised to explain once he wore a bee suit and sheltered in a safe place—the closet under her stairs. Melanie and Joan intended to tape up the cottage’s vents to protect him from an incursion and drew the curtains and blinds.

Dressed in extra layers, Emma approached the cottage’s front door. She walked calmly and quietly around the house to investigate. Most bees bearded the walls and windowsills. Bees buzzed around the front and back doors and before both stories’ windows. Individual bees hovered between the clusters and other bees snacked on Joan and Norman’s flowers or napped inside them.

Emma forced herself to smile but remembered the bees smelled alarm pheromones. With fake cheeriness, she said, “Hello, bees! It’s just me, Emma.”

The bees turned to look at her.

“Excuse me, please.”

The bees flew aside enough for her to reach the door. She turned the locked knob—and expected trouble. Joan and Norman never locked their doors, but Joan gave Emma a key for emergencies, and when Melanie automatically locked the door. Emma fumbled with the lock, and while pushing it open, took one large step to enter the hall, and then slammed the door behind herself, locked it, and leaned against it.

Melanie, Joan, and Norman were in the hall next to the cupboard under the stairs, but they stopped arguing and looked at her for a second. Simultaneously, Joan said, “Emma, I told you to stay home,” and Melanie yelled, “I locked the door and it was supposed to stay locked!” and Norman said, “Don’t yell at Emma!”

With no idea what Melanie referred to and positive that Emma had nothing to do with it, Emma yelled, “I didn’t know!” Emma had controlled herself around Melanie very well for years and Melanie yelled at her first. She unwrapped the plaid scarf from her head.

A muffled man’s voice from the cupboard under the stairs called, “What’s going on? Did they get into the cottage?”

Discombobulated, Emma looked around for Ross, as Melanie examined her for bees.

“How did you unlock the door?” Melanie asked.

“I gave her a key,” Joan said.

“I found a swarm,” Emma said because it was her only explainable recent experience.

“We are quite aware of the swarms,” Joan said.

“Did they get in?” Ross asked.

“Who is in the cupboard?” Emma asked.

“Ross Andrews,” Melanie groaned.

“This morning has been a bit of an ordeal for Ross,” Norman said.

“Emma, best stay here and leave the door shut,” Joan said.

“Right,” Emma said.

“And put your winter things in the living room before you overheat. I heard you tell your mother about skipping work. Where does she think you are?”

“I’m here to help out since your family might be busy with Paige.”

Ross's demands for an explanation of the bees’ behavior (they showed him a picture of Paige’s face) delayed the argument, and just as it began, Emma interrupted it. Now the adults continued.

Emma obeyed and sat on the couch, playing a game on her phone with headphones on. Still, she heard Melanie, Joan, and Norman, and through most of the discussion, the living room and cupboard radiated awkward silence. Initially, convincing Melanie she misinterpreted Joan’s behavior was the hard part, and until Melanie calmed down, nobody could do anything about the bees.

To everybody’s surprise and Melanie’s indignation, Ross said that assuming the bees were as weird as they seemed, Joan’s earlier actions made sense. He wanted to know, since Joan did not sic the bees on him, how the bees found him. In retrospect, Emma realized the bees in Joan’s hat acquired Ross’s face and location. Joan had forgotten the incident, but once Emma mentioned them, she and the others, except for Ross, thought it a good explanation.

“I want to ask a question that you might find a bit rude,” Ross said.

“Ask away,” Joan said.

“How do I know you aren’t trying to kill me?” Ross asked. “No offense.”

“Excellent question,” Joan said. “Vengeance isn’t Christian.”

“The law says we can sue you,” Melanie said.

“You and the bees ought to be justly punished, but we shan’t seek revenge. And we forgive your cook and your business.”

Ross asked, “Enough to drop the suit?”

“No,” Melanie snapped.

“Thought as much. So if you did not tell the bees to attack me, why did they?”

Joan had told the bees the family sued the restaurant owned by Ross Andrews. Because the bees lacked the concept of suing, she theorized they thought Ross himself attacked Paige. Mentioning the chef at this point might provoke the bees to attack another victim, so the bees needed to think Ross attacked Paige. The humans unanimously agreed the chef and Ross deserved to live.

Also, Joan wondered if the queen bee thought she attacked another queen bee: Ross. If the queen bee knew the restaurant had employees, the employees could be considered worker bees. When a colony of bees entered another, colonized hive, the queen bees fought each other. Joan’s bees took over hives when they deemed it necessary, bringing along their queen to depose the other one, but Joan frowned upon it. Normal bees stole honey, requiring several thousand bees to assault the hive, but Joan’s bees preferred signaling her. She was fairly confident her bees did not revenge wrongs amongst themselves.

Joan wished that when the bees suggested poisoning Ross, she told the bees, “Don’t kill Ross,” which sounded ominous and threatening to Ross, who required further assurances Auntie Joan was not a murderer. Fortunately, her reputation for decades and her descriptions of the bees’ abnormal behavior convinced Ross she told the truth.

“We shall kill Paige’s bees,” Joan said.

“Can I help?” Emma asked.

“I ought not to ask a minor.”

Joan intended to limit provocations to chaos. A horde of 40,000 stinging bees alarmed her. The queen bee might plan a stinging ambush or find another murder method. And, like anybody when threatened, the bees might hide and find Ross before Joan and Melanie found them, or, they might attack immediately before Joan carried out her threat. If the bees naturally split off into groups, Joan intended to exterminate each group. But she worried about scattering the bees—even a hundred missing bees stinging the right places threatened Ross’s life.

Norman scootered to Emma as Joan and Melanie went into the kitchen.

“Hi,” Emma said.

“Hello,” Norman said. “Joan gave you the day off.”

“I don’t want you to lie to your mum.”

“But I would be helping, and we can’t let the bees kill Mr. Andrews, so it isn’t a bad lie.”

“Paige can’t come over for a few months and her mother gave me a list of approved websites. Could you please show me how to use them?”

“Sure.”

While Emma helped Norman with things obvious to her, Joan and Melanie worked out a decent plan that terrified Ross as much as being stung to death by bees.

Reluctantly, Joan’s plans included Emma, simply because Melissa was unavailable. Melissa studied depictions of dragonflies on Zuni pottery in the United States and not only would she reach the cottage long after Emma’s 11:00 PM curfew, but the bees refused to let Emma leave, even when Joan asked. Standing for a few minutes or walking a short distance exhausted Norman, limiting his usefulness. Therefore, Norman promised to supervise and protect Emma while she participated in a physically challenging part of the plans.

Part 4 coming on December 11, 2023.

Melanie longed for decades to kill her mother’s bees or otherwise get rid of them. She did not want them to suffer; she just wanted them to die. Melissa’s older half-sister’s sentiments confused Melissa until bedbugs infested her university dormitory.

In one instance, Joan agreed with Melanie’s philosophy—when Melissa’s pet tarantula ran away, presumably afraid of the bees. Norman was fine with small bugs and found a few larger ones acceptable, like butterflies, but in general, the larger the bug, the less he liked it. He tended to place them outside instead of swatting them. Reluctantly, Norman allowed Melissa to buy Buttercup if the spider remained cozy and safe in the terrarium or on cleaning day, inside a designated tarantula jar. How, exactly, the tarantula escaped remained a mystery forever, but a family inquest determined it was not a malicious disappearance.

The honeybees surrounding the cottage meekly let Joan pass with her old lady cart and picnic blanket. A few scout bees followed her and peeked through the apiary and shed’s windows. She hid the necessary equipment under the blanket, but she worried the bees smelled it.

To the queen bee’s indignation, Joan caught her yet again and placed her inside a queen bee cage. From a human’s point-of-view, Joan handled the queen gently, but the queen bee felt jostled. Joan wrapped the queen bee cage in a clean hanky.

Ross’s ordeal frightened Melanie, but she would feel better after the battle. Over the years, Melanie thought of the anti-bee weapons and stored an inordinate number of bee killer cans. It distressed Joan, but she overlooked Melanie’s thirst for hemolymph until Ross’s ordeal was over. Melanie’s preparations and Joan’s apparent calmness about the bees’ behavior convinced Ross they expected premeditated bee attacks. The attacks were not necessarily on him, but on somebody, and not necessarily carried out by humans, but expected by humans who did nothing to prevent it.

When Joan returned, she instructed Ross through the cupboard door.

In the lavatory, Melanie removed anything possible, plugged the sink and tub, closed the toilet lid, and taped over the plugs and keyhole. She coated every surface with bee killer, frequently escaping to the hallway for fresher air. Joan had no need for insecticides, even organic ones, and the bees had never been inside her cottage, so she thought the bees would disregard the stench.

Melanie, Joan, and Ross worried a bit about extended skin contact with the pesticide, but they wore several layers under bee suits. Inhaled fumes hopefully caused fewer respiratory problems than anaphylactic shock. The other side effects sounded as pleasant as bee stings, but he, Joan, and Melanie had cleaned up many bodily fluids before. But at least the pesticide did not intend to kill him.

Meanwhile, Norman mixed sugar syrup and spread it over plastic food containers. He poured soapy water into spray bottles, water balloons, and plastic food containers with soapy water. He floated popsicle sticks in pots and bowls of plain water. Finally, he sprayed the sugar syrup, containers of soapy water, and plain water with bee killer.

Emma gathered miscellaneous supplies from around the cottage. With bee killer, she poisoned the bee brushes, the altered swarm box inside and out, and the bee vacuum’s interior, until they dripped. She carried tray loads of Norman’s ammunition upstairs to the lavatory. As Emma hauled up two old paint buckets of water balloons, the insecticide fumes wafted down the hall.

“Are you sure the bee spray is safe?” Emma asked, eyes watering.

“We will need extra oxygen after all,” Melanie wheezed. For Paige’s allergic reactions, Melanie bought very small, portable oxygen tanks, which included masks.

“Positive you feel all right?” Emma asked.

“It needs to dry.” Melanie coughed.

“Let me have a turn.”

Melanie shook her head and after a few tries, said, “No.”

Joan, Melanie, Ross, Emma, and Norman took extra-strength allergy medicine and slathered their faces and necks with hydrocortisone cream. Emma put on her winter things again and the adults borrowed Joan and Norman’s winter clothes. The group wore safety goggles, wellies, and rubber dishwashing gloves. Joan, Melanie, and Ross donned the oxygen masks, but Emma and Norman did not need them. At Norman’s recommendation, they covered the bee suits’ zippers and any gap between layers with duct tape.

Ross, Joan (carrying the queen), and Melanie filed into the lavatory and shut the door. Emma tucked a towel against the door’s crack. She stood on a stool to tape around the door with masking tape. Finally, she placed a chair under the door to prevent accidentally jiggling the handle open.

“Ready,” Emma called.

“Thank you,” Joan said.

Joan unwrapped the queen bee cage, held the cage to Ross’s eye level, and said, “Tell the bees to come indoors so that Ross can apologize properly. They can come in through an open window upstairs. I shall put you on the ledge.”

Ross quavered, “I’d like to apologize to the bees buzzing around the cottage.”

Joan opened the window. She set the queen bee cage down and opened it. Bees promptly clustered around the queen bee.

The queen bee steadily grew suspicious, but except for her nuptial flight, she had never been outside her hive before that day, let alone in a human’s hive. The humans smelled nervous and upset. However, the queen bee obeyed Joan.

The bees swarmed around the window. Ross whimpered and covered his face with his hands.

“Come in,” Joan said. “Come in so Ross can apologize. Have a bit of syrup and a drink of water. Rest your weary exoskeletons.”

The worker bees did not understand how humanhive worked, and they trusted Joan. 40,000 bees flew lethargically into the lavatory, bearding the countertops and walls, unless they collided with each other on the syrup trays and popsicle sticks. So much flying exhausted them and they desperately needed the rest, food, and water.

“Is everybody indoors?” Joan asked, looking out the window. Seeing no other bees, she shut it. She knocked on the door. “Are you there, Emma?”

“Yeah,” Emma said.

“You ought to begin now.”

“All right.”

Outside, Emma and Norman proceeded with their part of the plan.

Ross blubbered and whimpered an incoherent apology for a minute—the longer he talked, the more poison the bees absorbed. His tone confused the bees, who accustomed themselves to Joan’s quiet, steady voice, Norman’s cheerfulness, Emma’s teenaged tones, and Melanie’s temperament. The beekeepers who came and went were more comprehensible than the sweaty, mucusy mess of pheromones who attacked Paige. On the other antennae, Ross, Melanie, and Joan smelled scared. The bees wondered if the humans should be scared of the bees or if the bees should be scared of the humans or something else in the humanhive. It and others they occasionally saw through windows were very unusual places to live.

A bee dropped off the wall, paralyzed, and another struggled for a position on a popsicle stick, fell in, and found herself unable to swim out. Within seconds, other bees sent out an alarm signal.

Refreshed bees flew towards Ross, who shrieked. Melanie and Joan clamped lids on top of the food containers, trapping bees inside. She considered hunting for the queen but thought she made little difference to the bees’ tactics. Often through the slaughter, Melanie cackled.

“Vacuum up the bees, Ross,” Joan said.

Ross flailed with the vacuum, but Joan specifically instructed him to move calmly. Frantic movements provoked bee attacks. With one hand, Joan brushed bees from him, spreading bee killer across their bodies, injuring their legs and wings, and theoretically provoking them to attack her instead. With her other hand, she sprayed them with soapy water, which either drowned them or made them damp and heavy.

Immediately after Ross gained control of the vacuum, he fell over.

“Are you hurt?” Joan asked.

Ross whimpered and rolled onto his back. Joan turned off the vacuum.

“Ross! Are you hurt?”

He shook his head and spluttered something about the vacuum being off. Joan turned it on and he aimed at the bees. According to the plan, Ross needed to vacuum his entire body, but he focused instinctively on his face and neck.

It looked as if Ross’s bee suit was made of bees. The honeybees crawled over him, stepped on each other, or hit each other with wings, and pushed the dead aside. Altogether, the bees were surprisingly heavy. The bees stung Ross, but his clothing and the bee suit protected him. However, the sheer number of stings meant some penetrated his clothes. Others prepared to land.

The bees considered Melanie and Joan minor inconveniences. Bearding the bathtub and shower walls, they waited for an opportune moment to attack Ross and avoid the vacuum simultaneously.

A cloud of bees surrounded Melanie, but she sprayed them with one or two bottles of soapy water.

Joan wanted the bees to attack her. She hoped to distract them from Ross and especially Melanie. Naturally, Joan felt deeper concern for Melanie than Ross, but she prayed Ross survived. Panic-induced cardiac arrest seemed a more likely cause of death than anaphylaxis.

Joan switched off the full vacuum and took it from Ross, which was the signal for Melanie to barrage Ross with water balloons. Melanie’s water balloons drove bees into the air again and they landed on the ceilings and walls. Having emptied the vacuum into the swarm box, Joan suctioned bees covering the walls and ceiling; she assumed the ones on the flat surfaces were weaker.

The bees moved aside as Joan suctioned them and some regained their positions after one of Melanie’s water balloons, but they observed their attacks were ineffective. Though thousands of bees had stung Melanie, Ross, and even Joan, only Ross showed the slightest sign of a reaction. Joan had taught her bees the human’s scared dance—curling into a ball and whimpering—and Ross displayed it excellently.

Joan switched off the full vacuum.

“Are they dead?” Ross sobbed.

“I estimate about 20,000 bees on the walls and ceilings,” Joan said. “But, look, she fell off.”

Melanie happily said, “The pesticide worked!”

“Good. No offense, Auntie, Joan,” Ross said.

“Needs must,” Joan said.

More bees fell. Others flew to a flat surface, but some became paralyzed mid-air. Joan, Ross, and Melanie pelted the remaining water balloons at them.

“Melanie, I’m awfully hot,” Joan said, delicately moving food containers from the toilet seat to the counter as if a slosh was the only thing threatening the bees inside. “But I will feel better if I sit.”

“I’ll hurry up and kill them. Ross Andrews, do something before my mum has heat exhaustion.”

“They stung me,” Ross said.

“Is your airway closing?” Melanie asked.

“I don’t…think so?”

“Since you can’t tell, you are fine.”

“Melanie!” Joan said in her affronted mother voice.

Totally unchagrined, Melanie said, “Kill bees, Ross, before my mum has heat exhaustion. Use water balloons or spray bottles.”

Joan rested her head on the counter and waited patiently.

Melanie stepped into the bathtub and sprayed her last pesticide can over the bees. They cascaded down the walls and off the ceiling. Ross tossed water balloons or sprayed water at straggling bees elsewhere in the lavatory.

The thousands of living bees clustered into an irregular shape, and synchronized a flight at Ross. They stung him.

Part 5 coming Monday, December 18, 2023.

Other than bees, there were never insect or arthropod sounds on Joan’s organic bee farm. The absence of bugs was so difficult to explain to the organic control body that Joan could not label her products organic. In a natural environment, the silence felt ominous and backward. Many beekeepers quit because of it, but nobody except Emma admitted to the creeps, and some beekeepers struggled to identify the cause. For the observant ones, saying the reason aloud sounded pathetic or stupid. However, Emma asked where the fauna went, hoping to sound more curious than mildly alarmed. Then she adjusted to the surroundings.

Joan said the bugs moved away over decades, so gradually, she wondered when it began. Once she noticed, Joan thought it was a consequence of modern agriculture. Her ecologically friendly endeavors failed to attract wildlife. Whenever Norman and Joan attempted vermiculture for their flower beds, the worms slithered away, and macroscopic life emigrated from their compost heap. Insectivorous birds and animals foraged elsewhere. The other birds and animals rarely visited and always completely avoided the beehives. Melissa took soil and water samples from across the farm and examined them for microscopic life. The life she found lacked brains; the microscopic life consisted solely of bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, and algae. Melanie claimed Melissa’s data demonstrated anything with half a brain cell considered the bees dangerous.

While Joan, Melanie, and Ross proceeded with their part of the extermination plan, Emma and Norman went outside to drown Paige’s beehive.

The bees usually hummed loudly, but that day, they were quieter than in the middle of winter. Later, Emma compared walking past the beehives to walking through London during lockdown.

“Joan doesn’t seem very upset,” Emma said.

“She hides her moods,” Norman said.

“What will we tell Paige?”

“Melanie will think of a good excuse.”

Emma felt guilty about drowning the bees; Paige loved them. But everybody agreed the bees posed a danger to any beekeeper, regardless of age.

Joan and Emma exterminated diseased or weak colonies, but Paige’s healthy bees crammed the hive and worked productively. If Emma had time and a safe opportunity, Joan suggested harvesting the colony’s produce. It would keep until Paige felt well enough to use it. Generally, before extermination, Joan and Emma harvested everything from the hive. Sometimes bees considered them thieves or maybe they objected from self-defense, but some seemed to understand the situation. The bees knew when they were ill and how much Joan or her beekeepers harvested yearly.

Joan estimated Paige’s box currently contained 10,000 bees, each necessary to survive until the next summer—if the queen bee expected to return herself. Also, in the queen’s absence, the nurse bees would raise a new one, who required thousands of bees to found a successful colony. But, if the queen bee thought Ross might escape, she might have emptied the hive of all bees except eggs, larvae, nurse bees (who tended the larvae), and bees aged 10-20 days old (who built the honeycomb).

Joan still wondered how exactly the bees passed on knowledge, but they certainly did. A new queen in Paige’s hive might possibly cause trouble for Ross. She believed the eggs, larvae, and pupae were inherently less cruel than the queen and adult bees, being too little to receive instructions. Within weeks, the larvae would be adult bees. Extermination was the most sensible option if adult bees passed the grudge against Ross to the young. Further, colonies descended from Paige’s probably possessed an aggressive streak.

Emma brought a smoker and Norman armed himself with a spray bottle and several water balloons filled with soapy water. Under normal circumstances, stinging failed to intimidate her. She hoped the bees understood for the colony to survive, they needed to live. The fact that Emma planned to kill them anyway was beside the point. A stinging honeybee eviscerated and killed itself.

Thousands of bees zipped out of the top bar hive, ready to sting and buzzing their angry buzz. Emma smoked the bees to mask the bees’ alarm pheromones and trick them into gorging themselves on honey before the hive burned down.

The bees bearded her uncapping knife. It resembled a cake server sharp enough to cut through a honeycomb. Running out of space, the bees settled on her hands and arms.

“I know I’m a bit early this year, but Paige needs the honeycomb and honey,” Emma said to the bees. “It will make her feel better.”

“Royal jelly, as well,” Norman said. “She needs to eat the royal jelly or she won’t grow proper.”

“Auntie Joan will feed you honey all winter.”

“Right. I forgot a jar honey.”

“Let me get it.”

The bees stood on Emma the entire time Norman collected a bottle of emergency honey from the apiary shed. She held still.

Norman set bee feeder full of raw honey the ground. Several bees gravelly inspected it. Then the bees flew into the air and hovered menacingly in front of Emma.

Emma concentrated on transferring honeycombs from the top bars to the bucket. The bees knew Joan and her beekeepers harvested an amount acceptable to both parties, but once Emma exceeded it, the bees swarmed over her hand and knife and the frame.

“Shall I fire?” Norman brandished the spray bottle and a pink water balloon.

“They haven’t hurt me yet,” Emma said, slowly cutting, giving the bees plenty of time to move. “Paige needs the honeycomb.”

Bees stung Emma. To her relief, her bee suit and extra layers protected her, and she let them without comment, hoping they would give up.

Sweat soaked Emma and Norman and veils prevented drinking water. Her mother warned her that elderly people suffered heat exhaustion quickly. Also, Emma wanted to get away from the increasingly agitated bees.

When Joan exterminated bees, she normally used sulfur or dry ice. She thought fools burned sulfur during a wildfire watch and she did not keep dry ice on hand. Therefore, she told Emma to flood the hive—which had a screen bottom.

“We have enough for Paige. You can keep the rest.” Emma closed the hive.

To her surprise, the bees buzzed through the hive’s entrance. Emma nailed scrap wood over the entrance, then nailed the top down. She grasped the hive as if preparing to lift it.

Norman maneuvered his mobility scooter to a leg and sawed through it.

“Don’t know why bees need topple-proof legs,” he joked.

“Bees standing all on one side pull it over,” Emma said.

“Is it too heavy for you?”

“No.”

The pressure on Emma’s hands felt worse than the strain on her arms. Joan gradually changed to top-bar hives because the honeycombs hung side-by-side in one layer, but to access one of the boxy hive’s layers, she lifted tens of pounds. Emma hoisted the boxy hives with more muscles than people expected. With a grunt and her whole body, Emma heaved the bee hive onto its side and then onto its back. Emma poured old paint buckets of soapy water through the screen until the soapy water sticky with honey and full of dust and droppings flowed out.

“All done,” Emma said. “Do you think they suffered much?”

“They can’t hold their breath." Looking towards the cottage, Norman said, “Somebody should have been out by now. No emergency call, at least.”

“I’ll put the produce in the apiary and process it later,” Emma said. “Go into the house and cool down.”

“Joan issued strict instructions to watch you,” Norman said.

Emma and Norman made their way to the apiary, but Emma felt compelled to say, “They probably already killed the dangerous bees, so I don’t need supervision.”

“Arguing shall leave us in the sun longer,” Norman said.

In the house, Norman and Emma struggled out of their extra layers and bee suits. Norman asked her to check on the others, feeling too overheated and exhausted to hustle.

A trail of squashed bees and pesticide rescue led from the lavatory to Joan and Norman’s bedroom.

The tape around the shut lavatory door hung loose. Emma knocked. “Mr. Spencer wants me to check on you.”

“I’m cleaning the loo,” Ross called over the ventilation fan and another fan in the window. “I have a few stings, but I’m alright for now. Ask Melanie about Auntie Joan.”

Emma knocked on the door and Joan feebly said, “Come in.”

“Oh, no!” Emma said. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Joan lay on the bedroom carpet, ashy and sweaty. She felt faint in the lavatory but made it to her bedroom before falling. She thought broke her hip. Melanie cut off Joan’s extra layers and bee suit and gave her several ice packs, and a big glass of ice water. She insisted on disposing of the bee carnage before calling an ambulance. Ross called 999 anyway and to escape Melanie’s wrath, he helped.

Already, Melanie had opened every window in the house and lit scented candles. She ran the last load of bathroom furnishings from Joan and Norman’s bedroom to her old bedroom.

“I might have broken me hip,” Joan said, as Melanie left to collect the suspicious clothing. “I have something to tell you. Sit down near me so I can whisper.”

Emma sat and Joan whispered, “Tell the bees about me and tell them not to kill people or hurt people. Don’t worry Melanie with it.”

“Sure,” Emma said.

In a normal voice, Joan said, “I don’t want to bother anybody, but where is Norman?”

“I’ll get him.”

Norman trundled upstairs in his chair lift and transferred to his wheelchair. He tended to Joan while Melanie, Ross, and Emma continued tidying up. Dead bees stung them occasionally. It affronted Ross; Melanie just said, “Precisely why I told you not to touch them.” Just as the ambulance arrived, Emma ripped the tape from the bathroom door as the ambulance arrived, Norman plucked a dead bee from Melanie’s ponytail, and Ross scuttled into the cupboard under the stairs.

Dozens of bees had stung Melanie and Joan. The EMTs believed Melanie’s story. She and Joan worked with cranky bees on a hot day. She asked Melanie for help; Emma worked on another acre, hence their opposite conditions. Joan became faint from the heat and bee stings, so she decided to cool down in the cottage. She passed out while undressing and broke her hip.

The ambulance, EMTs, Joan, and Norman left.

Melanie and Emma checked on Ross, who was developing a severe reaction to the bee stings. His weight protected him from the venom’s effects somewhat. Despite the clothing, Ross suffered hundreds of stings over his body, though most stingers barely penetrated his skin. Also, Melanie kept him too busy to remove the stingers; she thought he suffered less than Joan.

Melanie and Emma helped him onto a couch downstairs. Melanie scraped out the bee stings and gave Ross Joan’s home cures for hives, sting swelling, itching, and pain. He felt a little better in the fresher air.

Melanie put her hands on her hips. “Alright, now, neither of you tell anybody anything about killer honeybees.”

Emma almost dared ask, Or what? but at the last moment, made herself say, “Sure.”

“Paige’s bees were diseased and needed to be exterminated,” Melanie said.

“Varroa mites?” Emma asked.

“No, believe it or not, they have brains. It was an unidentifiable, contagious disease.”

“What about the legs Mr. Spencer sawed off the hives?” Emma asked.

“She can’t have more bees. I’m taking apart the hive today and Norman can burn it when the wildfire watch ends. She will be in a rehabilitation center until then, probably. If she isn’t, she won’t be well enough to rummage around in the shed. Ross, what is your excuse for being stung?”

“What?” Ross asked. “I didn’t—”

“How will you explain the bee stings?”

In a panic, Ross blurted, “I went to Auntie Joan’s farm to order honey and got attacked somehow. I don’t know what I did to the bees. Emma, what did I do to the bees?”

“What is his excuse, Emma?” He looked at her in wide-eyed panic.

“Mr. Andrews wanted to see the inside of a hive and dropped the worker bee brood,” Emma said, drawing from personal experience.

“Excellent excuse,” Melanie said. “Both of you go home.”

“What’s a worker bee brood?” Ross asked.

Melanie groaned.

“Where the bees live,” Emma said. “Bees don’t like being dropped. Would you?”

“Right,” Melanie said. “Emma, you don’t need to work tomorrow. Mum and I won’t be here and the work can wait. Melissa arrives tomorrow and intends to stay until Mum recovers, so you will be working with her. Now go home, both of you.”

Ross trudged outside and Emma gathered her things and left.

“Wait, I can’t bike in my condition,” Ross said, standing uncertainly on the cottage step.

“I’m not driving a man,” Emma said because it was the kind of thing her mother would say. “Good luck asking Melanie.”

In her car, Emma texted Melissa: Auntie Joan wants me to tell the bees she broke her hip and tell them not to attack and kill people. How? What if they attack the hospital? Then she drove home.

Ross’s wife picked him up at the farm’s gate and made him go to the doctor.

Melanie cleaned the dried pesticides from the lavatory ceiling and wall and the floor’s puddles of pesticides, soapy water, and hemolymph on the floor. Despite her efforts and the fan running constantly for days, the lavatory stank like an unethical pesticide factory’s illegal chemical dumping ground.

Then Melanie dismantled Paige’s hive and hid the pieces, locked up, and visited Joan, who was in surgery. Norman berated Melanie for waiting to call an ambulance, and Melanie hissed at him to be quiet. He refused.

Part 6 coming Monday, December 25, 2023.

Joan’s broken hip hospitalized her for a few weeks, then a transfer to a rehabilitation facility for a few weeks. Through the wooziness and pain, she forced herself to think about her bees and the beekeepers. Now, beekeeping strained her, but she intended to keep as many bees as possible for as long as possible.

Joan wrote instructions, some devised during Ross’s ordeal to prevent another and some considered in hospital. She wrote several copies by hand in prim cursive with her purse’s fountain pen and paper borrowed from the nurse’s station.

Joan changed neither Melanie nor Emma’s hours, but they needed a supervisor; normally, Joan supervised. Her policy that apiculturist supervisors were legal adults ruled out Emma. When Emma turned eighteen, she planned to live in an interesting place or find an exciting job and decided against attending university. Joan already wrote her a glowing letter of recommendation and Emma applied to various dull, unskilled jobs in London. Therefore, Joan’s new plans excluded her, but Joan welcomed Emma’s employment and might promote her or schedule her full-time.

In the time between Clarence’s death and Joan and Norman’s marriage, Joan gave Melanie a choice: extra housework (allowing Joan more beekeeping hours), beekeeping (supporting the family via the farm), or a steady job (partially supporting herself and therefore lowering the budget). Melanie chose a job to utterly avoid the bees, but until she married Norman, Joan often forced her to tend them. The year Joan turned 65, Melanie, out of self-imposed obligation, began working at the apiary, and, therefore, she had significantly more apiculture experience than Melissa. By her own free will and against Joan’s wishes, Melanie was unpaid; she thought Joan could not afford another employee. Also, Melanie worked full-time and Paige needed more motherly attention than before, while the supervisor worked full-time and paid close attention to the bees.

Further, Melanie knew better than to make the vast majority of her mistakes. More than she wished, Joan worried about intentional anti-bee activity. Melanie’s mistakes outnumbered Emma’s, a fact to which Joan thought Emma was oblivious. Joan kept a closer eye on Melanie and fixed them quietly in private. Bees stung Melanie and now Joan wondered if they considered her hostile and Joan’s absence gave opportunity to attack Melanie en mass. An irate colony Melanie tended to quickly calmed down once Emma took over and the colony behaved itself better in Joan’s presence. Joan thought affectionate attention paid to the bees improved their lives and production.

During the extermination of Paige’s bees, Melanie’s revelry unnerved and betrayed Joan. She thought Melanie had more cause and opportunity to accidentally-on-purpose destroy a colony or provoke them into an extermination-worthy situation. Melanie might include reliable colonies in the annual weakest hives list and destroy contradictory produce, and it was impossible for Joan to check the hives personally.

To manage the business, Joan preferred Melissa, and if Melissa refused, she would hire somebody else, despite potential Melanie issues. For Melissa, Joan expected coping well with Melanie would be the worst part beewise and otherwise, changing Melissa’s entire life and abandoning her research were. Melissa stopped keeping them professionally once she left for university, and several years passed without hobby bees. Already, Melanie demonstrated her ability to overbear Emma; Melissa developed resilience. Joan thought Melissa would willingly become a supervisor, even though she preferred other jobs. Melissa and Emma would probably work well together, and Joan thought a peaceful job improved her employees’ lives, and peaceful coworkers, like happy, healthy bees, increased production and quality.

From the airport, Melissa texted Emma an official Telling the Bees statement: Auntie Joan is ill. She will feel better soon. Melanie, Melissa, Norman, and Emma will take care of the colony. Auntie Joan says if the colony tries to kill humans, Auntie Joan shall tell Melanie, Melissa, and Emma to kill the colony.

Emma considered waiting to work or telling the bees until Melissa arrived, but Joan had not canceled work through her convalescence. From Emma’s perspective, her job was more important than ever because Joan was unavailable, Paige and Joan’s conditions preoccupied Melanie, a single day of apiculture would exhaust Norman for a week, and Emma knew nothing about Melissa’s role. Though Emma liked her job, she preferred several other activities, but helping the Spencers seemed like the right thing. It annoyed her a bit.

While contemplating how to tell the bees and keep them calm, Emma imagined millions of bees activating the hospital motion detectors and buzzing through the hospital, confusedly stinging panicking people to death, until they found Joan. Obviously, Joan’s reputation among her bees guaranteed her safety, but what about the patients and staff?

Also, Emma dreaded Melanie’s reaction to a mass sighting. She worried if Melanie killed all of Joan’s bees, she and Joan would estrange themselves. In an emergency, Emma hoped Joan and Melanie promptly figured out a response. Melissa might have a good solution and probably knew how to handle Melanie in a bee-related situation.

Emma stopped by the cottage briefly to ask if Norman needed help. He said Melanie would drop him off at the hospital to visit Joan before she picked up Melissa from the airport. Norman suggested Emma wait with him until he left—otherwise when Melanie saw her car, she would tell off Emma.

“I’m not here to work,” Emma said.

“Joan said not to tell Melanie you were telling the bees,” Norman said.

“I’ll help you and Auntie Joan. The washing up needs doing or something.”

“Thanks, or you can come back lat—Ah, well. Here comes Melanie.”

Emma skidded to the kitchen sink.

Norman and Melanie spoke in the hall for a few minutes. Emma clattered the dishes, trying not to eavesdrop, and thought to distract herself. She figured out how to survive Melanie in Joan’s absence. Over the past couple of weeks, Emma became convinced Melanie felt hostile towards the bees, though hopefully only to the murderous colonies. Emma thought she and Melanie made approximately the same number of mistakes, and recently, Emma wondered why Melanie had not outgrown them. Emma noticed Melanie made weird, careless mistakes, like knocking over a full bee waterer and not refilling it, or opening a hive in the rain. Long before the others, Melanie complained about the labor. She procrastinated protective measures, especially in foul weather. Taking instructions from Melanie seemed like a bad idea. So, Emma intended to beekeep the way Joan taught her, whatever Melanie or Melissa said, unless Joan explicitly told her otherwise.

Melanie brought instructions from Joan and insisted upon reading them aloud to Emma. Melanie interrupted herself frequently to harangue, incoherently or confusingly, and so Emma listened politely, intending to re-read the instructions herself later.

Though Melanie wanted Emma to work under strict, immediate supervision, especially until she proved herself capable of following them, Norman supported Emma’s opinion that she could already adapt her behavior and work independently.

“But you are silly about the bees,” Melanie said.

“I am not!” Emma said. “I’m following Auntie Joan’s instructions.”

“She is worse than silly, and I don’t know what we will do if her new ideas make it worse. God knows how Melissa will encourage the bees. Let’s go over the instructions carefully, step-by-step, and you will prove to me you understand them.”

“Melanie, simply ask Emma if she has any questions, and take me to visit Joan. Let her call Joan if she needs help,” Norman said.

Reluctantly, Melanie asked, “Do you have questions?”

“No,” Emma said, rather than, Can you go away, please, so I can read the real instructions?

“You must need help with something.”

“So, I’ll ask Joan for help.”

“No, you won’t. You can’t. She is too unwell for work.”

“Melanie, trust Emma’s reading comprehension and take me to visit your mother,” Norman said, sternly.

To Emma’s surprise, Melanie objected.

Among other instructions, telling the bees required specific wording, in routine activities, certain words needed to be spelled out, such as extermination, and bee-related knowledge must be either read silently among the bees or discussed indoors with the door and windows closed. Coincidentally, the instructions explained Melissa’s clunky Telling the Bees statement.

To tell the bees, Emma wore a bee suit. All night, the bees hid in their hives and remained indoors when Emma approached. They also seemed scared and so unaggressive she doubted they would sting a wasp stealing honey. Gently, Emma knocked on each hive and a few bees crawled out to listen. She read Melissa’s statement aloud, and then the bees reentered the hive and repeated it to the queen. They understood humans well without pausing to translate. What Joan called “repeating” seemed to be a mix of body language, vibrations, and acoustics.

As Emma moved from the first acre to the second, she heard a loud buzzing in every direction. Hundreds of thousands of worker bees had waited for her to leave, and now they flew from the hive. Briefly, she worried they intended to attack her or somebody, but some settled on their own acre; a great diversity of plants grew in the farm’s fields. Other bees left, flying up to five miles away to visit customers’ gardens, local outdoor trails, hedgerows, and the like. That day, the bees foraged quietly, and relatively few left the farm.

The other colonies perked up and, while Emma informed them, bees across the remaining acres prepared themselves to forage. She felt comfortable in the fields again.

Telling the bees required hours. Emma returned to the apiary. Joan scheduled her part-time until harvest, then full-time.

Emma wanted to work full-time immediately and she felt qualified. Her business skills lay in processing honey and beeswax, packaging orders, and hand-writing receipts and shipping labels. Also, when Joan still sold other bee products, she taught Emma a little baking, soapmaking, and candlemaking. She deemed the results good enough for normal people’s everyday purposes; according to Norman, it was high praise.

Emma had no idea what an accounting ledger was until Joan explained hers. Later, Emma mentioned her mother taught her to cash the paychecks, but Emma forgot how to write a check. Whenever they bought something in-store, Joan told Emma to write the business’s check. She taught Emma to make change in her head, though more slowly than Joan.

Emma flipped through the ledger to last year’s breaking even. Once Joan quit various enterprises, she stopped paying herself, but, unknown to Emma, she and Norman saved for a sensible retirement. Most of the farm’s earnings went towards the employees’ salaries, slightly above the area’s average farming wages. So, the accounting ledger’s lack of profit seemed worse to Emma than to Joan.

Monthly, Joan wrote the schedule on a magnetic calendar blackboard. Emma wrote a note explaining her lateness, listed convenient times for her to catch up, and only wrote down the hours left in her shift. She wanted overtime, but thought mentioning it under the circumstances was rude or tactless—her mother said elderly people lived off fixed incomes.

Emma completed Joan’s usual morning to-do list and went about the routine work for a couple of hours after her scheduled shift ended. According to Joan, bees thrived in as stable, reliable environments as weather cycles permitted.

Melanie found Emma’s car, and ignoring Norman’s warning, Melanie pelted across acres. Norman scootered to Emma’s rescue, but Melissa dashed ahead, rumpled, jet-lagged, and at the end of an hours-long bee argument. Through the one-sided argument, the bees retreated into their hives and the colonies quieted themselves. They cowered from Melanie’s rath.

In the rant, Melanie accused Emma of coming to work, working unsupervised outside her normal area and hours, waiting for new training (Joan’s instructions had not specified it), and (Melanie jumped to the conclusion) disregarding or disobeying instructions. But Melanie’s words were so confusing, that Emma struggled to identify the problem. She insulted Emma and yelled at her. To add to Emma’s indignity, Joan always sent upset beekeepers away from the hives. It might disturb the bees, and her employees’ mental health concerned her. Because Emma felt fine until Melanie arrived and she recognized distressed behavior, Emma knew Melanie had broken the instructions.

Melanie thought Emma cultivated the bees’ aggression and intelligence by informing them of recent distressing events. Somehow, Emma kept herself from verifying Melanie’s guess—and Melanie, as mothers tend to, figured out Emma lied, which Emma recognized as a teenager.

Also, according to Melanie, Joan issued instructions to exterminate the bees closest related to Paige’s hive. Emma intuitively understood the wisdom, but she wanted Joan herself to assign it.

Finally, from Melanie’s perspective, Emma apparently continued working during the rant; Melanie thought Emma totally disregarded her like a snotty teenager. Actually, Melanie said off-hand that the bees probably absconded and needed immediate retrieval. Emma opened the Bluebell Hive to see whether every bee old enough to fly abandoned it—but she saw adult bees in their thousands buzzing anxiously in the hive. Melanie slammed the lid shut. Emma burst into tears and tried to fling open the lid, but Melanie leaned on it.

“You squashed a bee!” Emma yelled, yanking the lid open.

“I most certainly did not!” Melanie yelled.

As Emma held the lid open with both hands and her head, and the bees scuttled into the recesses to avoid Melanie, Norman said, “Melanie, calm down, and stop yelling at everybody. Emma, the bees are fine or they would have stung Melanie. We shouldn’t upset the bees, and Melanie, before you say one word about indicating the bees are dangerous, think again. Let’s go to the cottage. Melissa, take Melanie ahead.”

Emma walked slowly with Norman and between sobs explained her side. Her crushed finger hurt much less than her feelings, and Emma neither knew what Melanie thought she did wrong nor thought she had done anything wrong. Joan’s new set of instructions emphasized the bees were innocent until they misbehaved.

They heard Melanie and Melissa fight in the distance as Emma and Norman turned towards the shed and apiary to tidy up.

Melanie’s attitudes and opinions regarding Joan’s bees soured the relationship with her parents and half-sister. Incidentally, in her personal opinion, archaeoentomologists wasted their lives in a pointless field. Years ago, Melanie and Melissa concluded Joan and Norman were healthy enough for Melissa to live abroad; Melissa promised to return when they suffered serious problems. The arrangement suited everybody. However, Melanie felt bitter that Melissa became an archaeoentomologist and moved away, leaving the care of seniors to Melanie and forcing an obligation upon her to work on the loathed bee farm.

“Melanie said she needed to exterminate unusual or dangerous hives and I shouldn’t work until then,” Emma said.

“Melanie! Melissa! Come here immediately!” Norman called.

The half-sisters returned and Emma edged away to examine a meadow thistle.

“Emma, did you observe any unusual bee-hive-yor,” Norman asked.

Nobody even dignified that with a groan or an eye-roll, let alone a proper response. But Emma snuffled her observations.

“How do you know which hives are which, Melanie?” Norman asked. “When did you research it?”

“Listen to the bees,” Melanie snapped. “Do they sound like themselves?”

Everybody paused and listened.

“Yesterday, they sounded similar,” Norman said.

“Oh, there is another aggressive colony nobody told me about?” Melanie groaned. “Over the whole farm. We can’t control them. We—muffeh.”

Melissa clamped a hand over Melanie’s mouth.

“Mum said unusual, dangerous behavior, and this is not dangerous,” Melissa said.

Melanie attempted to say, “How do you know?”

“Emma, Melissa is your new supervisor. Listen to her and it will be all right,” Norman said.

“Mum always harvests the produce before e-x-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n, so we have to wait until f-r-o-s-t,” Melissa said.

Melanie answered except nobody understood her: “Needing to spell words around the bees shows how dangerous they are.”

“Did you hear Melissa, Melanie?” Norman asked.

Melanie nodded.

“Take your hand off your sister’s mouth,” Norman said. “Honestly, I thought you had given it up years ago.”

In Melissa’s opinion, the situation called for emergency measures, but she looked dutifully chagrined and said, “Sorry.”

“What did Melissa say with Joan’s approval, Melanie?” Norman asked, and Melanie grumpily mumbled it.

In the cottage, Norman, Melanie, Melissa, and Emma reviewed Joan’s new arrangements. An argument resumed and affronted Melanie quit beekeeping, saying if the others wanted to harbor and breed more dangerous bees, she wanted nothing to do with it, and she forbade Paige from approaching Joan’s bees.

Emma inspected her yellow rose tea cup until Melanie slammed the door behind her. “I didn’t mean to bother her.”

“You didn’t, really,” Norman said. “She is a bit stressed and scared.”

Melissa said, “I wrote my PhD thesis about bug horror media and real bugs! Why would I experiment on a horror movie or allow one to escalate?” She sighed. “Thanks for coming to work today, Emma.”

“I want to work full-time, but I didn’t write the time on the blackboard,” Emma said.

“Write it on the board for overtime and you can have Melanie’s hours if you want, full-time,” Melissa said.

Part 7 coming on Monday, January 1, 2024.

As long as Joan's bee farm existed, in the presence of people, the bees quieted. Initially, bees avoided Melissa; they seemed less cautious around Norman and Emma.

Melissa and Emma searched Joan’s bee genealogy for colonies related closest to Paige’s, the colony that attacked Ross. In the autumn, Melissa and Emma harvested the produce, then burned sulfur inside the hives to suffocate the bees. Melissa exterminated her bees the same way since they were also closely related to Paige’s.

Averaged together, the bees passively allowed them, but seemed slightly confused. Joan explicitly told the bees why the colonies died. She had not told bees about euthanized colonies before—it might have scared them. But now she warned her bees about the consequences of attacking humans. The current generation of bees behaved itself quite well and subsequent generations grew more docile and sociable.

Though Joan’s hip healed well, she never regained her old spryness, and Norman’s health deteriorated slowly. Melissa moved to England to care for her parents and work on Joan’s bee farm. Melanie declared she wanted nothing further to do with bees, and she hated even visiting Joan’s farm. But she made at least one long visit weekly and Joan, Norman, and Melissa babysat Paige on workdays. Although Paige’s brain damage from her allergic reaction stressed Melanie and preoccupied her, Melanie felt mentally freer now she no longer needed to keep bees or was obligated to. Melissa said she ought to have moved to England years ago, but Melanie did not tell anybody her opinion and feelings about the matter. Melanie dreaded her complaints worsening the family’s relationship.

Joan decided against replacing the exterminated colonies, meaning as the current colonies reproduced, she killed them. She informed the bees of her intention to stabilize the population. She and Melissa managed the downsized business themselves; Emma was the last employee at Joan’s bee farm, which relieved Melanie. Sensibly, Joan’s will stipulated Melissa (the executor) euthanize all her bees, and the clause reassured Melanie to the extent she felt slightly guilty.

Since Joan thought the bees might worry about Emma’s sudden disappearance, before Emma left for London, Emma told the bees she found work in a big human colony beyond the bees’ flying range. Emma, Norman, and Melanie kept in touch over social media, partly because they remained friends and partly because, if the worst happened when Norman and Joan died, Melissa required backup against hordes of mournful, infuriated bees. Even though Melanie might joyfully exterminate colonies, Melissa considered her undependable. Emma always had just enough money for transportation to the village and back; her parents welcomed a visit any time or Melissa invited her to stay at the cottage.

Paige fully recovered from the brain damage sustained during anaphylactic shock and she remained suspicious of restaurants and other people’s food. Her condition gave the restaurant such a horrible reputation that Ross struggled to keep it open. During lockdown, he filed for bankruptcy and moved away, spending the rest of his career managing other people’s restaurants.

Though Paige wanted to help on Joan’s farm again, Melanie forbade it, along with explanations. Paige called the arrangement unjustifiably arbitrary, but as she grew, she noticed Joan, Norman, and Melissa knew why. However, Melanie allowed a solitary beehive in her house’s garden and let Joan teach Paige apiculture. Melanie monitored the perfectly ordinary beehive closely.

In Melanie’s opinion, she herself dismissed Joan’s ideas much more easily than Melissa. She explained her opinion, but Melissa thought Melanie behaved overly secretively and absolutely rude. Because the half-sisters were unable to live on separate continents, their relationship deteriorated. Melanie aggressively distracted or stopped conversations about Melissa’s research or job. Melissa occasionally became distracted by a tangent onto bees and she had a degree to back up her ideas. They avoided each other, sometimes staying home from family occasions or attending, but ignoring each other. Melanie insisted they sit in the same church pew or people would wonder why, but, still, family friends noticed the two half-sisters disliked each other.

Melissa started an extermination business and bee removal service, often regaling her clients with historical bug facts. She continued her archaeoentomological research as much as possible, which was quite difficult. Melissa knew her parents would die, but because restarting her career ought only to occur after that, she disliked planning her future.

When professionally or as a hobby Melissa studied historical insects and other arthropods, she watched for extraordinarily intelligent bees. She doubted she would acquire a grant to research Joan’s bees, and neither tried nor intended to, but they had inspired her to become an archaeoentomologist. Also, she hypothesized experiments sped up the bees’ microevolution. But for fun, Melissa analyzed Joan’s old notes and books and contributed to the collection. Over the years, she digitized and backed up the collection.

Even though Joan highly limited human-bee communications, the bees’ vibroacoustics became more coherent—Joan and Melissa added a new section to Joan’s Bee Phrasebook. Joan’s hearing aid unreliably detected the sounds, so Melissa recorded them. Also, she invented a little bee call several times louder than the bees, but which the bees comprehended. Joan and Melissa promised to hide the bees’ development from Melanie until Melissa euthanized all of Joan’s extraordinary bees.

It became apparent that colonies worked together, with groups leaving to harvest a specific area or presenting a collective problem to Joan. Multiple hives never coordinated themselves around Melissa or Norman, only Joan.

Occasionally, bees expressed emotions, particularly grief over the death of Meadowsweet Hive’s queen. But the colony behaved itself. A viral outbreak prompted Joan to euthanize Primrose and Dogwood Hive. Other colonies on the acre seemed scared of infection and, in some way, bothered that the hives remained empty.

Long Covid declined Norman’s health quickly and he died of a heart attack, which made Joan a widow twice. She and Melissa informed the bees and distributed funeral biscuits. The upset bees seemed quite non-violent. Nobody attacked the nurses and doctor or blamed humans. Melanie suspected Joan’s anti-revenge warning subdued them, but Joan thought the colonies passed on caution themselves, remembering Ross’s ordeal.

A few years later, Joan developed breast cancer. Throughout her diagnosis and treatment, Melissa told the bees, emphasizing that the bees could not help her in any manner whatsoever, and the information clearly upset them. However, they had peaceful, sorrowful reactions.

Paige worked with Melissa on the bee farm; Melanie allowed it simply because Paige wanted to help her grandmother. So, Melanie told Paige about the bees attacking Ross. It shocked her and she wished Melanie told her sooner.

Joan died in winter.

Feeling unable to tell humans the truth, Emma told her friends that her Auntie Joan died and she needed to attend the funeral. Her parents wrongly presumed Emma and Joan had been attached to each other. When Emma applied to Joan’s bee farm, her mother warned her the Spencers and Emma held extremely different worldviews, but the differences and consequences shocked Emma significantly less than she expected.

The honeybees remained awake in winter, cozily clustered together inside their hives and vibrating their wings for warmth. On Joan’s farm, the winter temperatures regularly remained above freezing and sometimes the bees tolerated the outdoors for short periods. Usually, bees exposed to the outdoor temperature dozed off within a few minutes.

Melissa planned on exterminating the bees at night, taking advantage of the lowest temperatures. If the bees escaped and returned to the hive, they would freeze to death by the end of the week—she intended to leave the lids off the hives.

After preparing their gear and spreading hydrocortisone over their hands, faces, and necks and taking anti-histamines, Melanie, Melissa, Paige, and Emma dressed in extra winter layers and covered their faces with scarves, facemasks, earmuffs, and safety goggles. They duct-taped over the zippers and gaps, and, finally, pulled on wellies, headlamps, first aid fanny packs, and rubber dishwashing gloves. The fanny packs included trauma shears to cut through their layers.

Melanie, Melissa, Paige, and Emma gave the bees no warning about the extermination, but brought funeral biscuits with them and told each beehive, “Joan died.” The bees’ reaction consisted of distressed buzzing and vibroacousticing over each other. To everybody’s surprise and relief, they pointlessly donned the extra layers and bee suits. Every bee remained in the hive as Melanie, Melissa, Paige, and Emma burned sulfur.

Melissa remained in the village for another year as she and Melanie sold the farm and sorted through Joan and Norman’s estate. Sneakily, she evacuated Joan’s old books and notes from the apiary; Melanie wanted to destroy them, but Melissa refused to reveal their location.

Afterward, Melissa restarted her research career.

The relationship between Melissa and Melanie improved gradually, but steadily, over their remaining lives.

Though she worked in another career field, Paige kept bees in her garden. Her bees showed no signs of above-average intelligence and wildlife feared them like regular honeybees.

Joan’s lack of experience with pests had discouraged her from publishing her books. Eventually, when Paige felt competent with brained pests and diseases spread from buying other breeders’ honeybees (Joan eradicated her bees’ diseases), she and Melissa waded through Joan’s notes and books. They revised Joan’s books, edited them, added their own sections, and self-published them. Of their own accord, Paige and Melissa removed every hint of Joan’s bees’ unusual cleverness. They wrote that Joan considered bees highly intelligent and emotional creatures. Melanie disapproved of the projects, but Paige was an unstoppable adult and she resigned herself to Melissa guarding Joan’s knowledge.

Melanie dreaded she or Melissa would develop dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and blab about the bees, but Melissa reassured her if so, nobody would believe it, and what with the bees’ death, nobody could prove it. Melissa lied that the family lacked enough evidence for a cryptozoologist or other fringe theorist. In her professional opinion, the average researcher required vastly less data than Melissa and Joan provided. Because Melanie had absolutely no interest in respected archaeology, let alone views outside the mainstream ones, she was oblivious.

Melissa left Joan’s original collection to Paige, whose will required nobody discard them. But later generations did not believe that Joan’s bees were as extraordinary as the notes said.

This is the final part of The Queen Bee. Thanks for reading!