the main mass of bees; the colony clutched a little tighter and wriggled a little slower, as the smoke began to take effect. “It will be a minute or two yet,” Penelope said, and went to retrieve the wheelbarrow.
Mrs. Griffin was still there when Penelope returned, wheelbarrow trundling over the stone floor.
Penelope realized that she would have an audience for today’s work. “You don’t have to stand watch, if you don’t like. It’s going to take some time, I’m afraid.”
The printer grimaced. “I will not feel comfortable until these insects are gone,” she replied. “My people know where to find me when I am needed.”
Well, Penelope was used to working with touchy, easily irritated creatures. She puffed a little more smoke on the bees, though, just in case, and wished it would have had the same calming effect on Mrs. Griffin.
Perhaps the printer would be less anxious if she knew what Penelope was doing, and why. “First thing is to make the new hive a welcoming place,” Penelope began. She’d brought with her a round straw skep in two parts, like a bell with the top part of the dome sliced off. The inside of the larger part she’d rubbed with a little beeswax, which gave some traction to the straw coils and let the bees know this was a safe place for building comb. She set this on the bottom board and made sure it was steady and wouldn’t tip. Next she spread out a plain sheet on the floor—the better to spot you with, my dear—and brought out a handful of slender bars made of birch.
“The bees should be well and drowsy by now,” she said, turning to Mrs. Griffin. “I’m going to put on some gloves and a veil, since I’ll be working quite closely with the comb, but you should be quite safe as long as you stay still and quiet.”
Mrs. Griffin nodded once, sharply, and Penelope donned the rest of her bee clothes: sturdy gloves that disappeared into her coat cuffs, and a hat with muslin hanging down from the brim, tucked cozily beneath her coat lapels. “Right,” she said, and pulled out her knife. “Now we start cutting out the comb.”
She moved forward leisurely and carefully sliced the largest golden wedge away from the shelving. Bees clustered and hummed on the comb as she lifted it, but only one or two took flight in alarm.
Penelope turned the comb back and forth, peering closely. “Ah, there’s the queen—see that larger bee, in the center of the cluster? Her daughters are taking proper care of her.” Penelope couldn’t keep some of the joy out of her voice: bees followed their queen loyally, so moving her was the first step to moving the colony as a whole.
“Now we just . . . rearrange the furniture a bit.” Penelope knelt and rested the base of the honeycomb on the sheet, near the larger main section of the skep. A few quick strokes with a turkey feather brushed the bees from the comb to the sheet, where the workers quickly made a defensive clump around their dethroned queen. Meanwhile Penelope took out a large needle and thick linen thread, and whipstitched the upper edge of the honeycomb to a birch bar, being careful not to go through any brood cells. She then rested the bar across the top straw coil.
The honeycomb was now hanging in the center of the skep, just as it had hung from the underside of the shelf.
Penelope grinned. “Time to move our queen.” And, slowly, she slipped her gloved fingers into the mass of bees on the sheet.
Behind her, Mrs. Griffin choked.
Penelope kept her fingers soft and her mind serene—some of the older, stranger books said bees could read a beekeeper’s thoughts, and Penelope didn’t know if this were true but she did know that bees were still very much a mystery.
It never hurt to be careful, did it?
She slid her fingers slowly underneath the queen and a few of her ladies, murmuring compliments. A few more workers followed until the palm of Penelope’s hand was crowded. Then she lifted and reverently placed the queen and her little court inside the skep, on the bottom board. Soon enough the queen would make her way up the walls and back onto the comb; the rest of the hive as well as the remaining clump on the sheet would slowly but inevitably follow.
Even now, a few had flown out of the skep to tell the others where