The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [44]
Miranker stared at me. “Are you suggesting that the queen's flight went, er, unconsummated?”
“Is that possible?”
“It is more likely that she did not return at all. That is why the hive produces a number of queen cells, in anticipation of failure.”
“But if she was too bloodthirsty for them? If they didn't stop her from killing her rivals?”
“Then it might well be too late for them to raise up another from the eggs left by the previous queen.” But just as I was thinking that I had succeeded in solving Holmes' mystery, he said, “However. These cells have been opened from within.”
“What, all of them?”
“The five I see here. How many were there in all?”
“Twenty-one. They all looked pretty much—”
“Twenty-one? All like this?”
“As far as I could see.”
“I should say that all of these hatched.”
“You mean, this hive has made twenty-one queens? Every one of them hatched, and fighting for primacy?” Absolute chaos, if that was the case.
“More likely, hatched and flying off into the blue. In some hives, the difference between a cell intended for swarming and one intended for supersedure—replacing the queen—is clear. Here, I would not be so certain.”
“So, one after another, the queen cells hatched and led a swarm?”
“Yes. However, you see this frame here? The brood?”
“Unhatched bees?”
“And eggs?”
When he pointed them out to me, I could see them. “What does that mean?”
“It means the queen was active until quite recently. Certainly there was a queen in residence when I last checked the hive, three weeks ago.”
“So all this happened in the last three weeks? Twenty-one swarms?”
“No, the swarms took place beforehand. And that is the peculiar thing. Your hive had an active queen, and yet continued to hatch virgin queens, time and again. And not only did she not kill them, she did not lead any of the swarms. Just kept laying while the hive swarmed around her.”
“Did the workers keep her from killing them?” A hive madness, indeed.
“In their decreasing numbers? I should be surprised if they could.”
“Then what happened?”
“It would appear as if your queen simply ignored the imperative to murder, and went about her business while the hive swarmed itself to death around her.”
The hive died because the reigning queen and all twenty-one of her royal daughters were too soft-hearted for murder, and the hive could not summon sufficient numbers to maintain the brood.
This struck me as highly significant, although of what, precisely, I could not immediately think. Mr Miranker, however, had moved past the reasons.
“In any case, as I suggested to your husband, filling the hive with a new colony should be done soon. He could add a second hive-box, in the event that solitude has compounded the problem.” He sounded dubious about my theory.
Mr Miranker was clearly more concerned with solution than theory. Holmes, I thought, would prefer to dig into the cause—but then I recalled his initial proposition of doing away with the entire hive. Perhaps even he would not permit philosophy to get in the way of agronomy.
In any event, replenishing the hive was a task I was happy to leave to the professionals, since moving several thousand live bees around the countryside was not a challenge I cared to meet. Mr Miranker promised me that he would be on the watch for stray swarms that might appreciate a new home, and I said I would have Holmes arrange for a second hive-box at first opportunity.
I bicycled the four miles home from Jevington, well pleased with my solution to The Case of the Mad Hive.
Later, I carried the album of Damian's work onto the terrace to re-examine it by light of day.
Were the macabre overtones of his later paintings figments of my imagination? Was my own solitude working to cloud my perception?
One after another, I turned the pages, chewing my thumbnail in thought.
No, I decided: I was not reading a nonexistent message. Damian Adler's paintings were truly mad—although whether they were the deliberately cultivated madness of Surrealism, or an internal madness