Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,87

have pleasant talk while we eat?” Grams asked, taking her seat.

“Is what true?” I said, wondering which one of the many accusations she’d hurtled at me she was referring to.

“Is it true that Manny Chapman was visiting you from the river so nobody would see him? I’d like you to tell me what’s going on. Is it true?”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Holly said, finally speaking up and sort of coming to my defense.

I was reaching for a piece of chicken when it dawned on me—an epiphany. I’d been so dense until this very moment.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Yes, that’s absolutely right.”

Unfortunately, I said that out loud when I meant to just think it.

Somebody gasped. Holly, maybe.

I dropped the piece of chicken back into the serving bowl, jumped up from the table, and flew out the door.

“Now look what you did,” Grams said behind me, thinking I’d left because of my mother.

She was only partly right.

I wore my bee veil and gloves when I went in with the smoker. During one of my usual visits to my hives, I would typically just make sure the queen in each was doing well and that the workers were carrying on as usual. But this wasn’t going to be a routine inspection.

Colony Collapse Disorder was an unsolved mystery yet to be unraveled and it was always at the back of a beekeeper’s mind. When this sad event occurred, adult bees simply vanished, abandoning the queen and brood. All the workers, including scouts and nurse bees, disappeared at once, every last one of them, leaving stores of honey and certain death for those remaining behind.

My bees were in fine health, judging by the activity around the two hives. The entrances looked like busy airports. I stepped gingerly around the nails spiking up through the board, having learned my lesson last time. I’d also traded my flip flops for a sturdy pair of work boots.

After settling the honeybees in the first hive with a few puffs of smoke to keep them docile, I lifted off the cover and removed each of the honeycombs hanging inside the hive box. Slowly, cautiously, with a little more smoke here and there, I slid out each of the frames and inspected under and around before replacing them. Then I did the same thing with the next hive, careful not to harm any of my bees in the process.

Everything was as it should be.

I stood back and pondered. Manny, even as afraid of water as he’d been, had taken a canoe down the river by himself and paddled over to my house. He must have had a very good reason. The only explanation I could think of that “held water,” so to speak, was that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going. Or why.

I stared at the hive boxes. At home in my backyard, I kept the hives on concrete block bases so that they were raised off the ground, the theory being that the bees would be happier the farther their hives’ entrances were from the dampness of earth. On the night I’d moved the hives, I hadn’t bothered to also transport the heavy blocks. I’d had my hands full as it was.

Now that I studied the hives, I could see that one of them was at a slight angle. I’d assumed that was because I’d placed them on the edge of the cornfield where the ground hadn’t been tilled flat.

Crouching down, I rather awkwardly raised one side of the tilting beehive about two inches. It was too heavy to hold with one hand and still check underneath with the other. If I’d been paying better attention to my bees, I would have noticed that they were getting excited. Usually they were the gentlest honeybees you could know, but like all bees, they were protective of their queen and territory and really tuned in to threatening behavior from outsiders.

Outsiders, like me.

Instead of tuning in to them (using my “mental awareness” as Manny had reminded me to over and over), I rummaged around on the side of the field until I found a fallen tree branch thick enough to use as a lever. I worked it in under the hive. That freed my hands, but the gloves were getting in the way.

I took my gloves off, and was promptly stung on a knuckle.

Ouch! That really hurt.

Quickly, I scraped the stinger away, crouched down next to the hive again, reached under, and began feeling around. I should have