The History of Bees

by Maja Lunde

  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.

  At the very bottom I found the queen; she was marked, like all the queens, with a spot of turquoise paint on her back. Around her several young bees were gathered, the children. They weren’t dancing, were lethargic. Alone. Abandoned. Mother and children abandoned by the workforce. Abandoned by those who were supposed to take care of them. Abandoned to die.

  I scanned the ground around the hive. But there were none there, either. They were simply gone.

  I carefully put the queen excluder and boxes back in place. Noticed I was blinking rapidly. My hands shook, suddenly as cold as on a rainy autumn day.

  I turned towards the hive next to this one. The flight board, the entrance to the hive, faced in the other direction, so I couldn’t see it, but I didn’t have to look to know what was waiting for me; it was way too quiet.

  Not a trace of mites. No disease. No graveyard, no massacre, no corpses.

  Just abandoned.

  And the queen virtually alone down there, too.

  My chest tightened. I hurried to replace the cover.

  Opened the next one.

  There was hope in my hands when they quickly removed the outer cover.

  But no. The same thing.

  Opened the next one.

  The same.

  The next one.

  The next one.

  The next one.

  I looked up.

  I looked at all of them, scattered out at varying distances. My hives. My bees.

  Twenty-six hives. Twenty-six bee colonies. Gone.

  WILLIAM

  While Edmund was sleeping his way back to good health, I worked on the hive. The sun was shining again, out here my state of mind became more positive. Of course he wasn’t sick, he was just tired, Thilda was surely right. One day more or less made no difference, and when he had the chance to see what I had accomplished, his eyes would really be opened.

  The conditions for observation were excellent. I had put the hive high up, so I didn’t even have to bend my back to see. The bees had settled in surprisingly quickly, they now brought in pollen and nectar and were breeding continuously. Everything was as it should be. But one thing amazed me: their incessant need to attach the board with beeswax to something. I had attempted several different strategies, but if the boards were too close to the sides of the hive, the bees produced a mixture of wax and propolis, the viscous material they made from resin, and if they were too far apart, the bees expanded with brace comb, combs running across. This tendency they had, to always attach the comb to something, would in the long run make it difficult to harvest. There was something there, something I had to continue working on.

  He arrived while I was standing there. I noticed him before he saw me. The sight of him caused a quivering inside of me; his hat at a slant that cast a shadow over his face, a loose shirt over the sinewy body, the bag, the same worn sailcloth bag that always hung over his shoulder, full of glass containers, tweezers, scalpels and living creatures.

  I bent down over the hive. This could be the opportunity I had been waiting for, but I mustn’t show him how much was at stake for me. I kept my hands busy, although I was not fully paying attention to what I was doing. With my back facing the road I pretended I was completely absorbed, absorbed in this great undertaking, which was mine alone, the first that was fully my own.

  His steps approached, slowed down. Stopped.

  Then he cleared his throat.

  “What do you know.”

  I turned around. Put a surprised expression on my face.

  “Rahm.”

  He smiled briefly.

  �
��So what they’re saying is true?”

  “It is?”

  “You’re back on your feet.”

  I straightened up.

  “Not just on my feet. I feel better than ever.” It sounded childish.

  “I’m happy to hear it,” he said without smiling.

  I hoped he would follow up with more questions, want to know why I chose to use such dramatic turns of phrase, but he said nothing, stood half turned away, as if he would be leaving me shortly.

  I walked towards the fence, removed my hat and veil. I wanted to keep him here, extend a hand in greeting and feel his hand in my own. At the same time I became aware of my perspiring face, probably glistening and red. I discretely wiped off my forehead, but he had already noticed.

  “It’s hot in there,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “But it’s probably sensible to cover oneself up.”

  “Yes,” I answered, not really understanding what he was getting at.

  “There can be really awful consequences if one doesn’t cover oneself up.”

  He spoke in that familiar, instructive tone, as if this were news to me.

  “I’m aware of that,” I said simply and wished I could have said something crafty and wise, something that made him smile, but the only thing I had to offer apparently went without saying.

  “That’s why I’ve never been very enthusiastic about bees. One doesn’t get any direct contact,” he said.

  “No. It depends a bit on how secure one becomes.”

  He ignored me, picked up where he’d left off. “Unless one is a Wildman.” That brief smile of his slid across his lips.

  “Wildman?”

  Like so many times before, he produced an unknown name for me. His knowledge seemed inexhaustible.

  “So. We have not read about Wildman?”

  “No. I don’t know. The name sounds familiar.”

  “A circus artist, a charlatan. And a fool. He let the bees climb on him, without protection. He was famous for his beard of bees.” He stroked his face with his hands to demonstrate. “He had bees all over his cheeks, chin and throat. Even performed for King George III. Could it have been in 1772?” He looked at me as if I had the answer.

  “Anyway. His name suited him, this Wildman. What he was doing was like Russian roulette, putting all the bees on him like that and pretending he had complete control over them, a kind of magic. While the only thing he actually did was conjure up an artificial swarming. Overfed them with syrup and took out the queen. And wherever the queen is, the bees are, too.”

  Rahm’s condescending tone gave no indication that he was aware that this information was not news to me.

  “His father worked with something similar, by the way. Thomas Wildman. But in time he became a respectable beekeeper, among other things, for the nobility. He came to his senses. The son, on the other hand, carried on with that madness for the rest of his life. I wonder what he was trying to prove?”

  “Yes, I wonder,” I said.

  “Well, then,” Rahm said and gave a salute. “You are absolutely no Wildman, Mr. Savage. We both know that very well. But be careful all the same.” He swatted away a bee with his hand. “They sting.” Then he started to leave.

  “Rahm.” I took a step towards him.

  “Yes?” He turned around.

  “If you have time, I have something I would very much like to show you.”

  He didn’t say a word while I presented the hive. As he was dressed in Charlotte’s hat and veil it was impossible to see his eyes. I spoke ever more quickly, carried away by enthusiasm, because I was presenting something of my own now, for the first time. And there was so much to say, so much to explain. I showed him how easy it would be to harvest honey, how smoothly the boards could be removed, explained to him how simple it was to clean the hive. Held forth about the thinking behind it, that my hive was inspired by Huber’s movable-frame hive, but that this model was infinitely simpler in its function and also safeguarded a far better temperature for the bees. And not least, I showed him how the access provided ideal conditions for monitoring, the opportunities it provided for further studies of bees.

  Until in the end there was apparently nothing more to be said and I noticed how short of breath I was from my uninterrupted flood of speech.

  Finally.

  I waited for his answer, but it didn’t come.

  As the silence grew between us, my anxiety also increased.

  “It would please me to hear your thoughts,” I said finally.

  He walked around the hive. Studied it from all sides. Opened it. Closed it.

  I held my hands behind my back. The gloves were more clammy than ever.

  Then the inevitable.

  “You’ve built a Dzierzon hive.”

  I stared at Rahm, didn’t understand what he meant. He repeated the words slowly:

  “You’ve built a DZIERZON HIVE.”

  “What?”

  “Johann Dzierzon. Vicar and beekeeper. Polish, but for the time being he resides in Germany. It’s his hive you’ve built.”

  “No. This is mine. I mean, I’ve never even heard of this . . . Tzi . . .”

  “Dzierzon.”

  Rahm turned his back on the hive. Walked a few steps away, took off his hat. His face was red. Was he angry?

  “I read about his hive for the first time more than ten years ago. He has published a series of articles about it in Bienen-Zeitung.”

  He sized me up with his gaze; it was expressionless.

  “I know that you don’t read this publication and the articles haven’t been in circulation outside of research communities. So I understand of course that you haven’t heard of them.” His tone was overbearing. “But this hive you’ve made gives you good access for observation, as you so correctly point out. It would be easy for you to study the bees in vivo. Perhaps something could come out of the work all the same.”

  Now he smiled and I understood that the red color of his face was not due to anger, but rather amusement; pent-up laughter, the curt, small laugh without joy, because once again I’d disappointed him and he just wanted to laugh.

  But he didn’t release it, just stood that way looking at me, clearly waiting for an answer. I was unable to say anything. This couldn’t be true. Was all my work in vain? I felt a tightening around my throat, the blood rushed to my face. And when I was unable to say anything, he continued:

  “I would recommend that you inform yourself better in the field before you get started on your next project. Great advances have been made in the field in recent years. Dzierzon claims, for example, that queen bees and worker bees are both products of fertilization, while drones for their part develop from unfertilized eggs. A controversial theory, but of great current interest and much discussed. He has apparently also inspired a young monk named Gregor Mendel to start up a research project on heritability, the likes of which nobody has seen. There is lot to delve into here, as you can see.”

  He handed me the hat.

  “Nonetheless, it was good to see that you’re on your feet again. And thank you for wanting to show me your little hobby.”

  I stood there with the hat in my hands, so it was unnatural to reach out my hand. Neither did I manage to say anything, fearing that a good-bye would be accompanied by a sob.

  Rahm put his own hat on his head with a practiced movement, said good-bye with a nod and a touch of his hand to the brim of his hat and then he turned around and left.

  I was left alone, a young boy with his little hobby.

  GEORGE

  I walked quickly across the field, towards the river. Past the oak tree. There was a knot in my stomach. They had to be somewhere.

  I took out my cell phone, checked to see if anybody had called, maybe somebody had a swarm in their garden? But no. I would have heard it.

  Because this wasn’t swarming. Of course not. I knew that much. No hive looked like this after a swarm. No swarm abandoned the old queen.

  I went
through the landscape with a fine-toothed comb, back and forth.

  Nothing.

  I took out my cell phone again. Had to straighten this out, get it under control, and I needed help.

  I punched Rick’s number. He answered immediately; there was noise in the background, he was at the pub.

  “Rick at your service!” He said it with a laugh.

  I couldn’t answer, the words got stuck in my chest.

  “Hello? George?”

  “Yes. Hi. Sorry.”

  “Is there something wrong? Wait a minute.”

  It got quieter around him; he had probably walked out of the pub.

  “Hi. Now I can hear you.”

  “Yeah. Rick, I was just wondering if you could come over. To the field by the river.”

  The laughter disappeared from his voice; he heard from my own that it was serious.

  “What do you mean? Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “George? What is it?”

  My voice broke. “There’s stuff, a lot of stuff to clean up.”

  • • •

  Emma was crying. She was standing out in the middle of the field, under a tree, crying. The leaves threw shadows over her face, moving across her glistening cheeks. Maybe she’d tried to hide under the tree, hide that she’d broken down. But I found her, put my arms around her and held on tight, like I always did when she burst into tears. It helped, she calmed down. And I calmed down, too.

  Around us lay hives I’d turned upside down, the candy colors garish in the sunlight. They were tiny houses, razed by a giant. And the giant was me. I hadn’t bothered to clean up. Had rushed across the field, checking one after the other, while the blood raged in my body and my breathing wailed in my ears.

  I hadn’t lost all of them. A hive or two were just like before; the bees buzzed around and worked down there, as if nothing had happened, but there were far too few healthy hives. I couldn’t bear to count. Just kept going. On and on.