Telling the Bees (5 page)

Six

T
HE QUEEN BEE:
The mother of all bees in the hive, she has two functions: to lay as many eggs as she can and to emit the pheromone that will produce the next queen.

T
his is what I’ve been trying to explain,” I said, offering to refill Detective Grayson’s lemonade. He cupped his palm over his glass. “I was far too preoccupied requeening my cross-tempered number four hive to have paid any attention to the goings-on at my neighbors’ house that unfortunate day.”

Beehives, like any human household, have a temperament every bit as distinctive as the dominant personalities that reside within.

“While there are devices we can employ to keep our bees gentle enough to accommodate, and in some cases even relish, our presence, there is only so much a conscientious beekeeper can do before more drastic measures must be taken,” I said.

“Just
how
drastic?” Detective Grayson asked. His voice rose to suggest curiosity, but I suspected it was more from investigative reflex than any genuine apian interest.

“Requeening the cross hive,” I said. “Requeening is never my first choice. I usually try hanging a wave cloth near the flyway of a particularly testy hive. The constant flapping of the cloth in the breeze helps the bees to become accustomed to motion. This discourages them from rising forth to defend their hive from the occasional passerby. I have also found that several good puffs from a smoker can do much to calm an agitated hive when working in close quarters. But when all else fails, a cantankerous queen must be replaced.”

Detective Grayson nodded for me to continue as his eyes flickered about the room before coming to rest on the large picture window that dominated my dining room’s west wall.

“You must understand that the queen sets the overall tone of the hive,” I said, my eyes instinctively following the detective’s. “Just as a gentle queen usually produces a hive of workers and drones as even-tempered as she, a cantankerous queen more often than not holds court over a hive that is easily frightened or offended no matter what care we take to placate it.

“Come the first warm days of spring, it is the cross-tempered hives that are the first to swarm. This is why extra vigilance is required when a new queen is expected to emerge from such a hive,” I explained. “The last thing I want is another bad-tempered hive to go with the one I already have.”

Detective Grayson continued to stare past me and out the window. I took another sip of lemonade before recounting how, having heard the stirrings of a new brood of queens from my number sixteen hive the night before, my plan was to be up and outside first thing in the morning to watch for a gentle new queen to emerge so that I might use her to requeen my increasingly ill-tempered number four. I was about to explain exactly how such an operation was accomplished when the detective drew a conspicuous breath and refocused his eyes on mine.

“Are you sure you didn’t notice anything unusual over at the Straussmans’ when you first got up?”

“Nothing that I can recall.”

“Think a little harder. How about when you were eating breakfast?” the good detective pressed. “Maybe you noticed something then?”

I told him that I hardly remembered my repast at all, so anxious had I been to get on with my morning’s plan. “Why do you ask?”

“We think the old ladies must have died shortly after breakfast, judging from what the coroner found in their stomachs—bits of toast and egg and some undigested chunks of wax,” Detective Grayson said, flipping through the pages of the notebook he had withdrawn from his jacket pocket. “What do you make of the wax?”

“That would be their daily dose of honeycomb,” I replied. “Claire and Hilda were particularly fond of comb honey. They said the only way to properly enjoy it was to crush it with a knife and spread it on their morning toast—honey, wax, and bread all mashed together. Hilda swore this practice was what helped her ward off colds and all manners of sinus troubles. Myself, I prefer to cut off a bite-size piece of comb honey, chew it awhile, and then discard the wax, though I can’t say for sure it does me any more good than Hilda’s way during cold and flu season. You know, my grandmother, on the other hand, swore by black walnuts. ‘Crack and eat the meat of six walnuts,’ she’d say, ‘and you will not be sick a day.’”

Detective Grayson chose not to engage in a debate between the merits of honeycomb versus walnuts.

“You wouldn’t happen to know what time they normally ate their breakfast?” he prodded.

“Shortly after sunrise, between six and seven, just as I do,” I said. “Especially at this time of year. The young queens usually begin to hatch first thing in the morning, so it’s best to get an early start on the day’s activities. The earlier, the better.”

“I take it then that you were up first thing Friday morning, same as the Straussmans were,” Detective Grayson said, scribbling a line or two in his notebook and then pausing. “Think now, Mr. Honig. Maybe you heard something odd?”

“Nothing that morning that I can recall,” I said. “My number sixteen hive is at the rear of my property, well beyond either eye- or earshot of the Straussmans’ house.”

“Well, how about the night before? Anything out of the ordinary then?”

“Nothing more or less extraordinary than the squeaks of the unhatched queen eager to break out of her cell,” I replied.

Like most people, Detective Grayson knew nothing of the sounds bees make other than the familiar buzz of flight. I enumerated the range of chirps and whines and hums and squeaks emanating from a hive on any given occasion. The prudent beekeeper learns to distinguish which sounds mean what.

“The young queens, for instance, make a high-pitched squeal, not unlike the note of a distant trumpet, shortly before they emerge from their sealed cells,” I said. “When I hear this clarion call in the evening, I can predict with a fair degree of certainty that a new queen will be born the following morning.”

This is not the only thing I can predict, but I did not say as much as I watched the good detective sketch crude renderings of cartoonish bees wearing crowns upon their heads in his notebook that he’d laid open on the table between us.

So many people have come to me over the years to inquire about the best way to get into beekeeping, and, once in, how to refine their beekeeping techniques, that I find myself automatically evaluating the personalities of nearly everyone I meet for their suitability to such an endeavor. Observing Detective Grayson’s careless doodles, I suspected then that he had neither the patience nor the desire to care for bees. I also suspected that while he strove mightily to appear calm and unruffled, there was an aura of excitability beneath his pragmatic manner that was far too easily aroused. Such passions generally render one incompatible with bees. Claire Straussman had been one of the few exceptions to this rule, for while she had a mercurial personality that could set off more sparks than a Fourth of July celebration, she had an uncanny ability to read the nuances of pitch and tone by which bees communicate to one another and, by extension, to anyone outside the hive who cares to listen. This more than offset her unpredictable nature.

I noticed that Detective Grayson had allowed a small, self-amused smile to creep across his face as he added a trumpet-playing bee to his sketch before setting his pen down and folding his hands atop his notebook. Taking another deliberate breath, he let the corners of his mouth drift back into practiced neutrality.

“Okay, so you heard your bees squeaking last Thursday night?” he said at last.

“Indeed I did. Stronger—and louder, as I recall—than any I had ever heard before.”

I recalled—though I kept this to myself—how once upon a time the anticipated birth of a new queen, especially one heralded by such an uncommon racket, would have sent me hurrying next door to share the glorious news with my neighbors. Claire, in particular, took keen delight in observing the inner lives of our hives, and I had been for many years equally fond of imparting to her the finer points of beekeeping that had been passed on to me by my own father and mother. Sadly, however, such conviviality was no longer the norm between us, and so I had waited in solitude the previous Friday morning for the first young queen to break free from her cell. Detective Grayson did not appear to notice my retreat into private reverie as he returned his attention to the large picture window behind me.

“I see you can look right across to the Straussmans’ front porch from this window here.”

“Indeed I can.”

“So, once again, Mr. Honig . . .”

“Albert.”

“Mr. Honig,” he insisted, perhaps more brusquely than even he had intended, as his shoulders seemed to tighten as if to brace for a blow that didn’t come. Slowly, he curled his hand across his mouth and exhaled deeply before speaking again. “I appreciate your hospitality, Mr. Honig, I really do. It’s just that I like to keep all my work relationships professional. I’m kind of old school that way.”

“I understand, Detective Grayson,” I said, though I wondered why such a fine line needed to be drawn between first and last names.

“Just so we’re clear on that,” the detective said, keeping his eyes to his notebook.

“Of course,” I said.

“So let’s get back to last Friday,” he said, clearing his throat brusquely. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t see anybody hanging round next door while you were eating breakfast?”

“I normally take my breakfast in the kitchen, so I would not have seen anything next door as my kitchen window faces to the rear of my property,” I said. I explained once again that I had rushed off directly after breakfast, hoping to observe the birth of my queen and how my hopes had been rewarded when she emerged from the hive with her full retinue of suitors at a little past ten, just as the sun began to take the chill off the morning air. I believe I may have mentioned how sorry I was that Claire had not been there to see the birth of my new queen.

“You know, she was quite a beauty,” I said. Detective Grayson, who was scribbling furiously in his notebook, jerked his head up.

“Who? Miss Straussman?”

“What? Oh, goodness no,” I replied, equally disconcerted by the detective’s interpretive leap, but I smiled in spite of myself. “Of course there was a time when Claire attracted a full complement of eager young beaus.”

“I see,” he said. His tone remained even, but he shifted slightly forward in his seat. “So how is it she never married?”

“How is it that anyone makes the choices they do?” I replied. Certainly there are those who would say that my life has been diminished by the dearth of human company I have cultivated over my lifetime. I believe that solitude is not the same as loneliness. I recall that I told Detective Grayson something to the effect that I was happily bound to this world by my place in it for good reason. I know I quoted one of my mother’s favorite poets who wrote:

“Happy the man, whose wish and care / A few paternal acres bound, / Content to breathe his native air, / In his own ground.”

“That’s nice,” Detective Grayson said. I noticed that the cartoon bees in his notebook had been joined by the phrases
early risers
and
any gentlemen callers???
He had underlined the last phrase twice. As I watched him scribble on the page, my eyes fell upon the simple gold band on the detective’s left hand.

“What made you decide to marry?”

Detective Grayson shrugged with much the same motion a bear uses to twitch a gnat off his massive shoulders.

“Seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he said.

“Was it?”

“Was what?”

“Marrying. You seem to question Claire’s choice to remain unmarried, and perhaps my own by implication. What makes you so sure your decision was the right one?”

His shoulders twitched again. “We’re talking about Miss Straussman, not me,” he said, twisting his wedding band around his thick-knuckled finger as he spoke. It was not hard to imagine that the detective had done some boxing in his youth. As quickly as he let his guard down, he brought it right back up again.

“So, how about her sister? Hilda, wasn’t it? Did she have a lot of . . . um . . . gentlemen friends, too?”

“No,” I said. I would no sooner defame poor Hilda’s memory than I would knowingly disparage her to her face.

“No, Hilda wasn’t like Claire,” I said, choosing my words delicately. “She was big-boned and not much color to her.”

Seven

A
PITHERAPY:
The traditional practice of using bee venom and other products from the honeybee, including honey, pollen, royal jelly, and propolis, to treat illnesses and maintain health.

M
y conversation with Detective Grayson concluded on that most inconclusive note, and so for the next several weeks I arose each morning, hoping against hope that I would hear from the good detective again and that he would somehow help me make sense of this senseless tragedy. But no word came. From time to time I pulled from my billfold the identification card Detective Grayson had given me on the day we met and I thought about calling him. Once I went so far as to dial his office telephone number, but I’m afraid I hung up when a switchboard operator answered and asked me to hold.

“Hold what?” I remember thinking as I stared at the receiver in my hand.

Meanwhile the initial flurry of police activity soon dwindled down to nothing until the only visible reminder that something terrible had taken place next door were the strips of yellow police tape wrapped around the Straussmans’ once tidy clapboard house, making it look from the outside like a forlorn birthday gift I had neither the heart to open nor the will to ignore. And all the while, the days grew longer and grayer, and I was left feeling as forgotten as the tattered police tape that finally came unstuck and blew away during an unseasonable rainstorm in early June, nearly a month after the Straussman sisters’ murders.

The ground was still wet from the storm the following evening, and I was out of doors, tending to my number one hive, when I heard my name whispered softly above the subtle din of the hive.

“Albert?”

I turned my head toward the direction of the sound. It seemed to come from the shadows beneath the dripping bowers of the orange trees at the edge of my yard. I slipped my glasses off to wipe the mist from the lenses so that I might better peer into the darkness, when I heard my name called out again, only this time from behind me.

“Mr. Honig?”

I spun back around to see Detective Grayson standing at the foot of my back porch. Even without my glasses I could see that in his right hand he carried a large manila envelope. His left hand gripped the damp stair rail that I knew without seeing was sorely in need of a new coat of paint. I motioned for the detective to come join me at the hive. His reluctance resonated in the gathering dusk.

“I only need to talk to you a minute,” he said.

“That’s quite all right. We can talk out here,” I said, raising my voice only slightly so that I wouldn’t startle the bees, but that Detective Grayson might yet hear me more clearly from across the short expanse of my backyard. “I assure you, Detective Grayson, there’s no need to worry. The field bees have all returned to their hives for the night.”

Still, he appeared reluctant to venture any nearer.

“Are you wearing wool?” I inquired.

“How should I know?” he replied, clinging stubbornly to the back stair rail.

“You could check the label on your jacket,” I suggested, making no move to return to the house. “It wouldn’t be prudent to approach me now if you are wearing wool. Bees don’t like wool.”

Detective Grayson started to say something, then appeared to think better of it. He opened the front flap of the brown suit jacket, the same one he was wearing when I first met him, and he held it out so that he might read the label sewed into the lining. He shook his head slowly, and once again, by his slow deliberate gestures and carriage, I was taken by how much he resembled a grizzled old bear.

“Polyester blend,” he said, bringing his jacket flap back around and buttoning it shut. “Pretty sure the shirt’s cotton.”

“That’s good,” I said. “And your tie?”

The detective flattened his lips and drew them back from his teeth, which were surprisingly small and evenly spaced.

“You’d have to ask my wife,” he said, confirming my earlier suspicion about his ties. “Probably silk, knowing her.”

“Excellent,” I said. “What about your socks?”

“Mr. Honig!” he fairly growled at me.

“Never mind,” I said, hoping that by this time I’d distracted him just enough to calm his nerves. “Most of my guard bees are already bedded down, and any of the workers who aren’t inside producing honey are most likely occupied tending their brood. I doubt there’s a single bee still up and about that would pay the least bit of attention to your socks.”

I motioned once again for him to approach, and this time he did so very slowly, casting his eyes right and left and right again as he crossed the yard to stand warily by my side. He reached for the clasp on the envelope he carried, but I held up my hand for him to stop.

“Listen,” I said, bracing my hand on the hive stand and crouching low. I leaned my head toward the hive’s bottom super and paused. “In the summer months, when bees are hardest at work, they beat their wings approximately two hundred fifty times per second. Musicians say that the note the bees’ wings produce at this accelerated rate is C-sharp, below middle C, which interestingly enough is the same key in which whales, wolves, and dolphins also communicate. By contrast, the June bug, whose wings beat just forty-six times per second, produces the sound of F-sharp, three octaves below middle C.”

“For the love of God, Mr. Honig, I just need to ask you a couple of quick questions,” Detective Grayson said, his eyes scanning a tight arc around his head.

“It is for the love of all God’s creatures that guides me,” I said, and to his credit, the detective appeared at least slightly chastened by my words, and so I continued. “Quick answers are not always the same as the right ones. I find that the truth I seek is most often apparent to me when I take the time to listen.”

The detective’s ire seemed to deflate, if only a bit, as I spoke. For a long moment, the only sound between us was the dull roar of the hive.

“I wish I had your kind of time,” Detective Grayson said at last, ducking suddenly as a moth flitted by his face. “But I’ve got a murder investigation here, and the longer it stays on the books, the colder the trail gets.”

Again I leaned my ear into the hive and motioned for him to do the same.

“Jesus H. . . .” the detective muttered, his hazel eyes widening slightly. Then he shook his woolly head, slipped the manila envelope under his arm, and placed his hands on his knees. Exhaling audibly, he bent his stocky frame and stretched his neck toward the hive, though not quite near enough for his ear to touch the bottom level. We crouched there a moment, face-to-face, his left ear and my right poised mere inches from the hive’s lowest level.

“Listen now,” I urged. “What do you hear?”

“Please, Mr. Honig . . .” he said. But he did not move away from the hive. Nor did I. After a long pause, he exhaled loudly again. “Okay, it sounds like some kind of an engine, I guess.”

“Now bring your head up a few inches,” I instructed. “What do you hear?”

I heard the detective’s knees creak. And I heard him exhale heavily again, this time through his nose.

“I don’t know, Mr. Honig. Sounds pretty much like the same thing to me. Louder, maybe. Maybe a little louder,” he conceded, this time moving just a tiny bit closer as he raised his head higher.

“Listen now. Right here. It’s almost like a jet engine racing,” I said, and then I motioned for him to bring his head even with the top super.

“What do you hear now?”

“It’s not as loud,” he said with what I perceived to be the first hint of wonder in his voice. “It’s more of a whine than a roar. Like the engine’s sputtering out or something.”

I considered then for the first time that I might have misjudged the good detective. Though his manner could be abrupt, he certainly demonstrated better-than-average powers of observation and a concurrent ability to adjust to the dictates of a given situation. I began to consider the possibility that he might have a natural ear—just as Claire once had—for the delicate voices, slight rustles, and fluttering wings that indicate the many and varied activities that go on inside the hive.

“A week ago, when I listened to this super . . .”

“Super?” the detective interrupted. “What the Sam Hill is that?”

It was a reasonable question, really, for someone who’d never heard the common term for the boxlike hive component that fits on top of the brood chamber that houses the queen and her issue below. But there was something in his voice, an eagerness that floated just beneath the surface of his own awareness, and that’s when I suspected he might be prone to bee fever after all. Not that he was bitten yet, but I could see that his eyes were steady now as he squinted into the dying light of the sun.

Patiently, then, I explained how wild bees seek out sheltered places like hollowed trees or crevices in buildings or rocks in which to build a hive.

“Did you know, Detective, that swarming is initiated by a special dance called the
Schwirrlauf?
” I said. “
Schwirrlauf
is German for ‘whir dance.’ It’s quite a choreographed procedure by which the workers move across the comb in a straight line without stopping. And as they move, they vibrate their partially spread wings every few seconds, making occasional contact with other workers, as they sing in a high piping voice. It’s really quite lovely to behold.”

Despite its aesthetic merits, however, beekeepers do their best to prevent this particular dance as one has little control over where the new colony may choose to settle. To this end we provide honeybees with a ready-made home that consists more or less of a sturdy base upon which we place a wooden box, or hive body, equipped with movable wooden frames with wire-reinforced brood foundations inside. On top of this base we stack, over the course of the honey-producing season, a series of shallower wooden boxes called supers that fit snugly one on top of another like so many stories on an apartment building.

“Inside each super are hung, side by side, ten to twelve wooden frames containing sheets. The uppermost stories are not as deep as the bottom two supers. These are the ‘shallows’ where our hard-working bees construct additional honeycombs in which they store the excess honey that is not needed to feed their queen and her young below,” I explained to Detective Grayson. I pointed to the uppermost story on the hive next to me.

The detective nodded, this time as if he understood more, and not less, than I had told him.

“Only a week ago, even in the middle of the night, the buzz in this shallow was every bit as loud as it was in the levels beneath it,” I said, now confident that the detective would make the effort to follow my train of thought. “That’s because the bees were laboring round the clock to fill each cell with honey. And now . . . ?”

I paused to allow Detective Grayson time to reason out the answer. I assumed the same curiosity and doggedness that drew him to investigate crimes would spur him to puzzle out the answer to my question. He leaned closer to the hive, allowing his ear to brush against the side.

“By the sound of it, I’d say they’re almost done with the job,” the detective replied, smiling in spite of himself, as he brought himself back to an upright position with a heavy grunt.

I nodded, inordinately pleased by my potential convert. “In another day or two, you will barely hear a whisper coming from this super. That’s when I’ll know it is full and capped and ready to be replaced with a fresh one on the next warm day. With any luck, and the Good Lord willing, I might even find a pot of eucalyptus gold inside.”

I explained to the detective that the color and even the consistency of honey are greatly influenced by the nectars from which it is made. Honey from orange blossoms, for example, is milky white and carries a slight citrus tang, and alfalfa honey is amber-hued with a distinctive minty flavor, while the ever-abundant clover flower produces the sweet golden honey most commonly sold on supermarket shelves.

“Infinitely more rare, though sweeter by far than any store-bought honey, is that which is made from the blooms of the eucalyptus tree,” I said. Detective Grayson said he had never heard of any such variety, and I told him I was not surprised.

“These magnificent trees will bloom branch by branch from January until July,” I told the detective, “and every warm day, for the duration of their flowering season, the most intrepid of my field bees will work with special diligence to harvest the sweet eucalyptus nectar that they will in turn convert into the most savory honey I have ever tasted.”

I have only rarely sampled this liquid jewel, however, as my bees seem to favor it above all honeys they produce and so hoard it most exclusively to nurture their brood.

A cool breeze had begun to blow as we spoke, and it set the old eucalyptus trees to creak and rustle almost on cue as I enumerated for Detective Grayson other peculiarities of honey production.

“Did you know, Detective, that honey is classified by the flower from which it is produced. It is further distinguished by color, clarity, and aroma.”

“Can’t say that I did,” he replied.

“I recall a lovely little wildflower that flourished untended in the fields just north of our ranch when I was a boy. It brought forth a strongly flavored honey the color of Chinese jade.”

“Green honey?” he said.

“Nearly,” I said. Depending on the light, this honey could also resemble pond water reflecting the afternoon sunlight, or passing storm clouds, or, it suddenly occurred to me, Detective Grayson’s eyes.

“What kind of flowers were they?”

“Sadly, I didn’t think to learn their name,” I replied. “I was just a boy, after all, and I assumed they’d always be there for the picking.”

I recounted for the detective how after the day’s chores were done I used to enjoy evening walks through the old orange and avocado groves that filled in the patchwork of fields and feed stores between the roads and railways that once upon a time surrounded my family’s home.

“Summer nights aren’t nearly as fragrant now,” I said.

“I know what you mean,” Detective Grayson said. “Heck, even thirty years ago, when the wife and I bought our first house—it wasn’t far from here, by the way—there were still plenty of orange groves, and strawberry fields, and nice big yards and schools and parks and little corner grocery stores where parents didn’t have to worry their tails off just to send their kids out to buy a quart of milk.”