Майя Лунде - The History of Bees

Nausea surged up inside of me.

“Are they just going to stay here?”

She turned her head away.

“Leave now.”

“No!”

Finally she lifted her gaze. Her eyes were pleading.

“Go. And forget what you’ve seen.”

I wanted to hold back the trolley, hold her back, but she tore it away from me. It hit the doorframe with a bang, she missed the opening, had to try again. She finally managed to tug the trolley with her out the door. The wheels vibrated against the floor as it disappeared down the hallway. The sound grated in my ears.

I stood on the street, didn’t know how I got there. I’d walked away from them, left them like everyone else had, I was a part of it. This was our world. We sacrificed our old people. Was this what had happened to my own mother, too? She was sent away. Everything had happened so quickly. She’d disappeared. And I hadn’t done a single thing to help. Just let it happen.

Mom.

I bent forward, sank down onto my knees. My diaphragm contracted, my stomach convulsed.

I threw up until there was nothing left. Then I stood there. I should go back. Give them food and water. Get them out of there. Or find someone who could help. I should act like a human being. Somebody had to do something. I was perhaps that person. Perhaps management didn’t even know about the decision to leave them behind. Perhaps they didn’t know.

But that wasn’t why I was here.

Wei-Wen.

The people there weren’t my responsibility. They were the hospital’s responsibility. And their families’. Somebody had left them there. Not me, not this time.

Mom. I had failed her. I would not fail Wei-Wen. And the people in there… There was nothing I could do. I had to focus on my child. I threw up again, as if my body were protesting against my thoughts, threads of slime stuck to my lips. It tasted sour; there was an intense stinging in my nose and throat. I deserved it.

I sat there, dizzy and faint. Then I slowly got to my feet and started walking. I didn’t have any idea where I was headed, just knew that I had to get as far away as possible.

My mouth was dry. I tried breathing through my nose, moistened my tongue with saliva. It didn’t help. I stuck my hand in my purse, there was a bottle of water there. I took it out; it was half full, and I emptied it in huge gulps.

Then I walked on. Lost contact with time. A part of the sky was lighter. I was drawn towards it. Perhaps there was sunshine there, perhaps I could get away from all of this gray. But the point in the sky grew smaller and smaller, the light veil in front of the sun thickened into a wall.

It was only when it was too late that I realized I had lost my way.

The hives were back in the field, in the grove and on the edges of the ditch where Tom clearly wanted them to be. Strictly speaking, he didn’t really want anything to do with them out here, either.

It was early morning and I was out in the field by the Alabast River. The sun was beating down on my white hat, my coveralls and net. I wore nothing underneath. Drops of sweat ran down my back, tickling until they reached the edge of my boxer shorts. Florida must be sheer hell now. God, how happy I was that we hadn’t decided on that .

Because the summer up here was plenty warm enough. The weather had been sensational during the past few weeks. Not a lot of rain. The bees flying in and out, in and out. Gathering nectar from the moment the sun came up until it disappeared in the field in the evening, right behind Gareth’s farm.

This was the best time. I was out with the bees a lot now. Took my time. Sometimes I just stood there studying how they danced. The movements back and forth, in which I wasn’t exactly able to discern any system, but I knew it was their way of telling one another about where the best nectar was: Now I’m fluttering my wings a little, moving to the right, then two steps to the left, and then a spin around and that means you have to fly past the big oak, up the small slope, over the stream, and there, my friends, there you’ll find the best patch of wild raspberries you could imagine!

That’s how they carried on. In and out, dancing for the others, searching, finding, bringing. And the hives grew heavier and heavier. Sometimes I tried to lift them, testing, assessing their weight, the honey that was already dripping inside. Golden, liquid money. Money for the down payment, money for the loan.

The hives had long since been expanded with honey supers. And now the task at hand was to prevent swarming, prevent the old queen from taking parts of the colony away with her to make room for a new queen and her offspring.

The field by the Alabast River was located far away from people, but I had nonetheless been summoned more than once to remove a swarm in a fruit tree, by angry fussbudgets with frightened children, who stood trembling inside with their noses pressed flat against the windows, while I shook and coaxed the swarm into a new hive. This kind of thing gave us a bad reputation, so I worked hard to avoid it. And the bees had a curious ability to find trees in people’s gardens, not just in God’s open nature, when they were taking a break while the scout bees were searching for a new home.

That’s why my head was down in the hives all the time, searching for swarm cells. If I detected the smallest sign, I squeezed them flat. And if I discovered larvae, there was nothing more to think about. The bee colony had to be divided up.

In some hives the urge to swarm was strong. I never found out why. It was a matter of replacing the queen, breeding from one of the best. Resisting the temptation to continue with the offspring of the swarming bees.

I’d already replaced most of the queens this year, but a few were allowed to live. Some faithful queens that continued to lay eggs for up to three years. Ideal queens. These were the ones I preferred to breed from.

I was standing beside one of them now. A pink hive, a conscientious bee colony. One of those that brought in the most nectar. Bees I could count on, that produced like crazy; the hive had already been expanded by two boxes this year. Two heavy boxes full of honey. I hadn’t been here for a week, had concentrated on hives in other places.

Tom was buzzing in my head. I didn’t look any closer at the flight board before removing the outer cover. We hadn’t heard from him. Nothing about the scholarship, nothing about what he was thinking in terms of his future. Or maybe he’d called and talked to Emma while I was out, without her mentioning it afterwards. I just waited. Maybe he was thinking through his options. No news was good news in a way. And he knew where to find me, it wasn’t as if the farm had grown wings and flown away.

Had I lost him?

I put the outer cover on the ground and only then did I come to and focus. Because the sound wasn’t the way it normally was, the way it should be. It was far too quiet.

I removed the insulation lining. Now I would definitely hear them soon.

I looked at the flight board, the opening.

No bees.

Then I looked down into the upper box. The food stores were fine. A lot of honey.

But where were they?

Maybe in the next box. Yes. They had to be there.

I removed the top one. My back complained. Remember to lift with your legs. I tried to take it easy. Put it carefully down on the grass, straightened up and looked down into the next box.

No. The brood box. They had to be in the brood box.

I quickly removed the queen excluder. The sun was directly above my head, illuminating the box below me.

Empty. It was empty.

There was plenty of brood, but that was it. Just a few recently hatched bees crawling around, without anyone to take care of them. Orphans.