Queen Bee (Lowcountry Tales #12)(2)

“I said, I’m going to check the hives!”

“Whatever! Suit yourself! Don’t be gone long. I’m getting hungry!”

Oh, eat a can of beans, I thought. Didn’t I just feed her? She drove me crazy. My mother, Katherine McNee Jensen, was one colossal pain in the derriere. She kept tabs on me like I was a child (which I was not) and treated me like her personal maid (which I was). If I didn’t have a garden and hives to tend and a volunteer job at the library, I’d go right off the deep end. I had been trying to get a teaching job at Sullivan’s Island Elementary School for years, and the best I could ever seem to get was the occasional substitute job. Because the island was so popular, there was probably a longer waiting list for teaching positions there than there was anywhere else in the state. And I sold my honey at the island’s farmers market and sometimes at the farmers market in Mount Pleasant because I harvested over a hundred pounds, sometimes much more, every year. But eight dollars a jar wasn’t going to make me rich. Eventually, I’d get a break.

I let the wooden screen door slam behind me with a loud thwack and took a long, slow, deep breath. Rise above! And how was I ever going to get out of her house and make a life for myself? I was going nowhere until she did. So, for now, I was a bachelorette, keeping my considerable favors under wraps until the right man came along. The thought of me having considerable favors worth keeping under wraps made me smile. Well, to be completely honest, many right men had come along, but they kept going, straight to the welcoming arms of my sister, Leslie. And anyway, now I had my neighbor Archie’s little boys to keep me busy. I preferred children to adults any day of the week. I’ll get to them in a moment. There’s so much to tell you.

I want to introduce you to my bees first. Everyone knows honey bees are good for the environment, but few people know why or how their hives are organized. There’s a division of labor for every stage of a honey bee’s life. Every bee has his or her job to do to ensure they continue to coexist as one. Everything they do is to preserve the colony. Humanity could take a few lessons from them. You’ll see what I mean as time goes on, the same way I came to gradually understand them. In any case, I loved the time I spent with my bees because, despite their intense activity, it was so serene. Serenity was in short supply around here. The good news was that there was zero chance of Momma following me out to the apiary. She wouldn’t come near the hives out of fear. I keep telling her she’s not sweet enough to sting. She doesn’t think that’s funny.

The apiary was in the back corner of our yard, surrounded by a pale blue picket fence, painted thusly to keep out the haints. Haints is a Gullah word for haunts or ghosts. In this part of the world, the Lowcountry of South Carolina, it was generally accepted that a thoughtful application of blue paint would keep a whole array of spirits at bay, ranging from the mischievous ilk to the downright evil. I just happened to like the color. The fence was covered on the inside perimeter with clear mesh to thwart other enemies of the hive—mainly raccoons. My hives were aqua, pale pink, and pale peach. The pastel colors made me feel like I was taking a short trip to Bermuda, and when I looked at them it always lifted my spirits.

I looked up to see the UPS truck pull up to our curb. Andy, our regular UPS deliveryman, hopped off his truck and called out to me.

“Hey, Miss Holly! Sure is a fine day!”

“Yes, it is!” I called back because I didn’t want to get into a whole conversation about planet Earth actually having a meltdown. “Your rear passenger tire is about to blow, you know.”

“I’ll get that checked out! Thanks for the warning!” he called back to me. “I’ll just throw this on the porch?”

“That’s fine!”

It was probably something from QVC that Momma ordered. That’s what she did all day. Sat up in her big bed and watched QVC and ordered large housedresses and sweats decorated with kittens and mermaids, which she thought were stylish and appropriate for church, on the rare occasion that she actually attended Mass. I’m not judging. Okay, maybe I am.

I lowered the veil on my hat and went inside the gate with my lit smoker, not that I ever needed it. It was wise to approach hives from the side so that the guard bees wouldn’t be alarmed. I took the cinder block off the top of the first hive and then removed the roof. I kept my smoker handy so that if, on that rare occasion, my girls seemed agitated, a gentle cloud of pine and sage could calm them. One by one, I lifted the full frames. The brood was already growing like mad. Where was the queen? And why was she hiding from me? Another omen.

“Your queen’s sure getting busy early this year!” I said, talking to my bees. “Yes, indeedy!”

I replaced the frames and covered the hive, checking the ground for fire ant mounds. There were none that I could find. I filled a pan with water so the bees would have plenty to drink.

There were many reasons and even more suspicions about why you should talk to your bees, too many to ignore. I told them about my mother’s illnesses, which I felt positive were psychosomatic, and about my sister’s continuing windfall, which bordered on the obnoxious. Sometimes I made up songs to sing to them, like Leslie’s going to Bangkok and Holly’s staying home. Leslie’s got a brand-new Benz and Holly’s staying home. I was so grateful no one could hear me, but didn’t everyone need a place to vent and be silly? I’d heard stories about people’s bees swarming when they were left out of the family loop. I hoped my bees had a sense of me as a part of their colony. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt like they knew me. I had enough pluff mud in my veins to consider the possibility of almost anything. Although experience told me that while bees are unbelievably smart about so many things, they don’t have emotions in the same way we do. At least not individually. But there is such a thing as hive mentality. I’d seen hard evidence of it many times over the years.