legends · 4 min read ·
Hive Inspections
A beekeeper's notebook follows one failing hive that takes in the others, and the face she finds in the comb.
**Beekeeping notebook — Jean Marlow, Apiary at Tunnel Farm (6 hives)**
**15 May.** All six hives strong. Queens laying. Fitted supers on 2 and 5. Weather warm, flowers abundant. The oilseed rape across the lane is just coming out.
**1 June.** Honey flow beginning. Hives 1–5 fine. Hive 6 (the new swarm) building up well.
**20 June.** Added supers to 1, 3, 4. Hive 6: not much change. Queen not seen. Eggs present. Bees calm.
· · ·
**14 July.** Hive 6 is very quiet. Normally a hive in July is loud, a roar at the entrance and a hum through the wood. Hive 6 is silent. I put my ear to the box. A faint sound, like someone breathing slowly through a straw.
**21 July.** Opened Hive 6. Frames drawn out in perfect combs, wax white and clean, sealed with a fine cap. No brood. No pollen. No honey. The bees are on the frames, thousands of them, still, with their heads all pointing the same way.
I lifted a frame and held it to the light. The bees did not move. They looked, I suppose, as bees do in a winter cluster, but it was July and warm, and they were facing towards me.
· · ·
**4 August.** Hive 6 is now heavier than any of the others. I weighed it on the hive scales. 74 kg. No honey in it. No stores. I lifted the roof. The bees are still there, the same quiet crowd, but the comb is thicker than it should be. They are building down, not up, in a stack that has pushed the brood box into the floor.
I put in a new floor. The following week the old floor was back, under the box, and the new one had gone.
**11 August.** A visitor, the farmer's wife, came to see the hives. She stood at Hive 6 and listened to it for several minutes. She said: "They're saying something, aren't they?" I said bees do not say things. She said: "No. But somebody is saying it to them."
· · ·
**25 August.** The bees in Hives 1–5 have stopped flying to the oilseed field. They go to Hive 6. They enter at the door and do not come out. I have watched them. At dusk they gather in a cloud over the box, a column of bees ten feet tall, turning slowly, and then they funnel in.
Hive 6 has not grown. Its entrance is the same size. But it takes in twenty thousand bees a night.
**1 September.** The other hives are failing. Hive 3 is empty. Hive 4 is a handful of bees and a queen. I inspected Hive 6 and found a single frame in the middle of the box, a wide plain comb, very pale, with a shape on it. The bees had drawn the comb in a pattern, in relief, the way a mould makes a face.
I looked at it for a long time. The face was mine.
· · ·
**15 September.** I have stopped opening the hive. But I put my hand on the lid last night. The wood is warm, as warm as a living animal. There is a pulse in it. I counted it. Sixty a minute, steady, slower when I breathe out.
I wondered whether to burn it. I have the right. A hive that has failed can be burned, to protect the other colonies. But the other colonies are gone, and the only hive left is the one that took them.
I took a photograph. In the photograph the hive is not a hive. It is a standing figure, as high as the roof of the shed, made of bees, holding very still, with its arms at its sides.
· · ·
**1 October (last entry).** I went out this morning with a smoker and a hive tool. I stood in front of Hive 6. The hum had started up again, deep, low, in the wood. I could feel it in my teeth.
I lifted the roof. It was the first time since August. Under it, the crown board had been pushed upward. A pale stack of comb stood on the board, built in the shape of a hand, open, palm up, with something on it.
It was a single sealed cell of honey. It was the colour of amber, and very bright, and it was meant for me. I could tell by the way the whole hive had gone silent.
I put the roof back down. I did not look. I have written this down and left the notebook on the kitchen table. I'm going away for a few days.