The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [33]
“Did you find anything?” enquired a voice.
I dropped the weighty frame onto my foot, stifled an oath, and swung around to glare at whatever holiday tripper had come to me for his entertainment.
He was a small, round man, clean-shaven and neatly dressed in worn tweeds and a soft hat. His arms were resting atop the dry wall, his chin propped on his fists. Clearly he had been watching me for some time while I had stood, top over tea-kettle with my head in the box.
Before I could send him on his way—the public footpath might be nearby, but this was decidedly not on it—he straightened. “Mrs Holmes, I presume?”
“More or less. Who—”
“Glen Miranker; at your service.”
“Ah. The bee man.”
“As you say. My housekeeper told me that you and your husband had returned. I rather expected to see him out here before this.”
“He has been called away. But you're right, he came out to look at the hive immediately we got back on Monday evening.”
“Did he have any thoughts?”
“Holmes generally does. But in this instance, he didn't share them with me.”
“Am I right in believing that you are not familiar with the apiarist's art?”
“Merely an untrained assistant,” I admitted. “However, I thought I might look at the hive and see if anything caught my eye. When we were here Monday, it was nearly dusk, and he only got as far down as the super.”
I reached for the frame again, but as if my words had been an invitation, the man stretched out on the wall and then rolled over it, picking himself up stiffly from the ground and grabbing my torch. I waited as he conducted a close examination of the nooks and crannies, then I resumed sliding the laden frames into place.
“You have rather a lot of swarm cells here,” he noted.
“As your letter to Holmes said, they swarmed,” I noted dryly.
“But I checked the hive less than three weeks ago.”
I glanced at his aged back, bent over the hive, and wondered how he had managed to unload the boxes by himself. Perhaps he didn't. Perhaps it had been more than three weeks ago.
When I shifted the boxes, he made no effort to help, confirming my suspicions that his back was not fully up to the task. Instead, he inspected, delivering all the while a lecture on the craft of beekeeping such as even Holmes had not inflicted on me. I heard about varieties of bee and methods of hive construction, chemical analysis of the wax and the nutritional composition of various sources of honey, several theories of communication—Holmes' “subtle emanations”—and how the temper of the hive reflected the personality not only of their queen, but of their keeper.
“Which is what makes this particular hive so very intriguing,” the man said. By this time I had returned all three sections to their former setting, and he was prone with one cheek on the grass, examining the hive's foundations. I obediently struggled to tip the heavy box off of the ground. “Your husband's bees tend to be eight parts methodical, one part experimental, and one part equally divided between startling innovation and resounding failure.”
“Er, you mean that his techniques are either innovative or failures?”
His head came around the side of the hive. “No, I mean the bees themselves. Reflecting his personality, don't you know?”
“I see.”
He paused to stare off into the distance; my muscles began to quiver. “I recall him describing how he had introduced a peculiar herb out of the Caucasus Mountains that he'd heard had an invigorating effect on the honey. The bees took to it with great enthusiasm, made an effort to spread that herb's nectar evenly throughout the combs, became disconsolate when the flowers began to fade. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the taste of the honey itself was absolutely revolting. Rendered the year's entire production unpalatable.” He shook his head and continued his minute examination.
“So, are you suggesting that this hive's madness is a reflection of some aspect of their keeper?”
He sat up, startled, and I gratefully allowed the hive to thump to the ground.