Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
Keeping the Hives at Cala Mare
A beekeeper on the cliffs above Cala Mare records his hives through a hard winter, and the bees begin to swarm toward the sea at night, forming a shape over the water that he decides not to describe.
- dated: Winter, from the first frost to the thaw
- narrator: Anselm Corr, beekeeper
- reliability: reliable
First frost. Wrapped the hives in sacking, as my father taught me. Put a slab of candy above the cluster and checked the entrances are clear. The bees are quiet. They shiver in the middle of the box, a slow dance that keeps the queen warm. The wind off the cliffs is hard this year.
Ten days of frost. Opened one hive on a mild afternoon to check the stores. The comb is good, the bees all pressed close together. But there is a space in the middle of the cluster, cleared out and smoothed, the exact size of a hand. I did not make it. I took a photograph and I will not look at it again.
Week three. The bees are restless at night. I can hear them through the sacking, a low drone that rises when the wind comes off the sea. Went out with a torch at two in the morning and saw a thin dark cloud rising from the hive stands and drifting toward the cliff edge. Hundreds, maybe thousands. They did not look like swarming bees. They moved as if they were following a path only they could see.
I followed them as far as the wall. They hung over the water a few feet above the surf, turning slowly, and the shape they made was not a ball or a column. It had a face. I am not going to describe it further. I will say that it was looking at the cottage.
Week four. Lost two hives to the cold. The rest seem fine but the queen in number four has stopped laying. I asked the old man at the harbour whether the bees ever swarm in winter. He looked at me for a long time and said only that they swarm for the one who is leaving, and that you should leave them a jar of honey on the wall the night before.
Week five. Put a jar on the wall. Next morning it was empty, the lid set back neatly on the stone. There was a little wax on the rim, pale and fresh, and a single bee sitting in the middle of the wall, perfectly still, facing the sea.
Thaw. The hives are warm again. The queen in number four is laying. I have not told anyone about the face over the water, and I do not intend to.