Telling the Bees Read Online Free PDF Page B

spare.
    Before taking my leave, I asked the detective if I might ask a favor of him. He raised his eyebrows, which, like his hair, were in need of a good trim.
    “Would it be possible for you to see to it that they are transported in a single vehicle?” I queried, gesturing to the pair of coroner’s vans parked in the driveway. I explained to the detective that in all their years on earth, Hilda and Claire had only rarely found cause to spend time apart.
    Detective Grayson took a deep breath and squeezed the raised tendons at the back of his neck.
    “As the Lord has seen fit to take them from this life together,” I persisted, “it seems so very wrong to send them off to their heavenly repose in separate vehicles.”
    The detective’s eyes flicked from me to the second gurney that had just begun to nose out the door and back to me again. He shook his big bear head slowly and let out a protracted sigh.
    “I’ll see what I can do.”
    I had no choice but to trust his good intentions, and so I let myself be led back across the expanse of the Straussmans’ front yard to my own porch, where I bid the young officer a polite farewell at my doorstep. I considered for a moment whether I should check on my hives before going inside. Though the sun was still less than midway through its journey across the sky, darkness had already fallen on all I could see, and, in truth, my legs suddenly felt as though weighted with lead. There was a growing constriction in my chest that seemed to ratchet ever tighter with each breath I took. I decided my bees would have to take care of themselves for an afternoon.
    Entering my darkened house, I sat for a while in my parlor before slowly climbing the stairs to my bedroom, which by then was bathed in late-afternoon shadows. I switched on the reading light over my mother’s old padded rocker. I had moved this chair from my parents’ room into mine after my father’s death.
    Sleep was out of the question, but, for once, I found no solace in my books. After a time, I switched off the lamp, opened the curtains of my window, and lay down on my bed. I watched the color of the sky shift from gray to mottled black to gray again.

Five
    Q UEEN MANDIBULAR PROTEIN: A pheromone produced by the queen bee that attracts drones for mating, inhibits the production of replacement queens, unites the colony, and stabilizes its temperament by drawing attendants to the queen and stimulating the development of nurse and forager bees to raise its brood and gather honey and pollen to feed it. Without it, robber bees seem to be drawn to the hive.
    T he next morning, I arose even earlier than was my custom. Finding food as unappealing as sleep, I decided to forgo my usual breakfast routine in favor of a small nibble of dry toast and a teaspoon of jasmine honey. Yet even this slight fare seemed to catch in my throat, and I quickly sought what comfort I could out of doors in the quietude of my own thoughts, where I passed most of the morning tending to my hives, which had been sorely neglected in the distractions of the previous day.
    It was close to noon, and I was doing what I could to fend off a small brown ant infestation in my number three hive when I heard my name being shouted from across my backyard. I looked up to see the detective I had met at the Straussman sisters’ home the previous day standing at the foot of my back porch.
    “Mr. Honig?” he called again to me, this time louder, but with a slight tremor that I naturally ascribed to an apprehension common to those finding themselves in close proximity to so large a number of bees for the first time. I set down my smoker can and the empty container of motor oil I had just finished pouring into the tin pans suspended on the legs of my hive stand. I approached the house, as it was clear by the grip of the detective’s hand on the porch railing that he would venture no closer of his own accord. As my mother often said, it is easier to bring Muhammad to the