The Queen Bee, Part 7 of 7

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!