Heather Momyer
for Greg Russo
…..“Why on earth would you want to be a beekeeper?”
The worker bee.
…..The worker bee can fly at speeds up to 15 miles per hour. Her jobs are to gather nectar, pollen, water, propolis, feed the queen, the drones, and the larva, clean the hive, repair the hive, ventilate, cool, and heat the hive, defend the hive. Her weapon is a straight barbed stinger that anchors itself into her victim’s flesh. She cannot withdraw the stinger. Instead the worker bee’s internal organs are torn from her body as she moves away. She dies soon after.
The girl.
…..“Bees aren’t so bad,” Kate said. “You just have to be nice to them and they won’t bother you.” Her friends from school jumped rope in the school parking lot, Janie at one end of the rope swinging it high over the girls’ heads. Another girl with blond pigtails moved her arm in synch with Janie from the other end. They jumped in their shiny shoes and plaid jumpers, and sang songs about bubble gum and lollipops.
…..Kate jumped into the line, skipping one foot then the other, the rope flying over her head. The sun was high and the pavement was hot. They could see the heat steam off of the cars. It was almost summer and school was coming to an end. The girls wore ponytails with ribbons in their hair and their bobby socks were neatly folded. Behind them, further away from the observing teachers, the boys threw a football or played in the dirt piles with plastic action figures.
…..Janie imagined Kate as a beekeeper. She imagined her in a white hat, her hair pulled back and her cheeks pink from the sun, a white net covering her face. Kate would not be just a beekeeper though. She would be a bee charmer. They would swarm all over her, never stinging.
…..“I was stung by a bee before and I never did anything to it,” Janie said, still swinging the rope over Kate’s head. Kate didn’t stop to answer. She didn’t stop jumping until one of the teachers blew the whistle. Recess was over and the girls went back into the building, Janie carrying the rope.
…..Janie went to Kate’s house after school. They lived a block apart in a suburban neighborhood with brick ranch homes and above-ground swimming pools. The houses looked the same lined neatly in rows, red brick, yellow brick, brown brick, red brick, yellow brick, brown brick. The younger kids rode their Big Wheels down the paved hills as the parents at all of the other homes sat on back porches drinking gin and tonics, twists of lime.
…..If the source of nectar or pollen is within 90 meters, the worker bee performs a circular dance at the hive. She moves about two centimeters, then circles in the other direction. If the newly found source of food is further away, the worker bee interrupts the circular pattern with intermittent movements across the diameter of the circle, vigorously wagging her abdomen.
…..Together Kate and Janie watched the bees in the clover in the backyard. Kate stared at them while lying in the grass on her belly. She swung her legs up and down to the ground, her ankles locked together.
…..“My dad told me that bees dance. That’s how they talk,” she said. “They do different dances to tell other bees where to go for the pollen and how much there is. That’s what they use to make honey.” Kate watched to bees go from clover to clover, bouncing around in the grass, a performance just for Kate.
…..“What kind of dance do they do?” Janie asked. She watched Kate watch the bees.
…..“Like this,” Kate said. She stood up and spun on her toes. She flapped her arms and kicked her legs. Flap, flap, and kick, kick. Janie wondered what she was saying as she did the bee dance on the lawn.
The drone.
…..The drone does none of the work. He has no stinger, is defenseless, and unable to feed himself. His purpose is to mate with the queen of the hive, and after mating, the drone immediately dies. If he has not mated by fall and the coming of winter, the drone is expelled from the hive and left to die.
The father.
…..Kate’s father no longer worked the evening shift at the hospital. He quit his job saying he wanted Kate to have someone waiting for her at home after school. He was the only one…the only one left after the woman with long brown hair walked from the doorway and went down the sidewalk.
…..He wanted to be a beekeeper too. The queen does not quickly abandon the hive.
…..He told Kate about the worker bees and the drones. One works hard while the other has a life of leisure, but neither lives very long at all. They serve their purpose, and then they die. “But you won’t be a worker, Kate. You’ll be the queen, won’t you? Queen of the honey bees.”
…..After school, he told Kate and Janie that he had something for them. They followed him into the garage where the truck was parked. Janie could see the slab of fresh honeycomb wrapped in plastic in the back of the truck. He brought it straight from the hive. Kate’s father unwrapped it and stuck his fingers into the hexagonal comb. He scooped the honey to his mouth, honey dripping to the floor. It seeped into his beard, sticky sweetness. Kate and Janie followed. It was warm on their fingers. As it began to dry, Janie’s fingers began to stick together.
…..At school the boys laughed when the teachers weren’t there.
…..“Hey, crazy girl, what were you doing last night in your backyard, buzzing around like a loony? Did your old man teach you that?” They laughed and ran in circles, flailing their arms, mocking the bee dance.
…..Afterwards, when the girls went home, they found Kate’s father waiting on the porch.
…..“I’m still waiting for that secret package,” he told them. But it wasn’t a secret. Kate already told Janie what it was. It was a queen bee. He wanted to start his own bee colony in the backyard. He waited on the porch everyday since he placed his order. She would come in a small wooden crate with honey for food and two or three attendants.
…..“But who will she be queen of?” Janie asked Kate as they sat alone in the backyard. “Doesn’t she need a hive?” She watched Kate pull at the grass and clover from between her bare feet, uprooting it as she spoke.
…..“Of course not, she’ll have us.”
…..No one told Kate’s father about the time she wanted a pet bee. She used a yellow butter container from the kitchen and hunted for bees in the backyard. She stalked one and when it landed on a clover, she put the container down over it. The lid already had holes in it so the bee could breathe. It was near the cherry tree and white blossoms lay on the ground. Kate slid the lid in from underneath and snapped it in place. But when she turned everything over right side up, there was no bee. Kate lifted the lid and found the bee along the outside lip of the container. She had crushed its head while putting on the lid. She started to cry. She named the bee Skippy and buried it under the lilac bush. She made a tombstone from a rock. “R.I.P. SKI” it read on the front, “PPY” on the back. Janie performed the funeral service. They knew her father would have been disappointed.
The queen bee.
…..The queen bee lays about 1200 eggs per day. This is necessary since the worker bees have a life span of about six weeks, and the colony usually needs 40 to 50 thousand bees at its peak. The queen is the only sexually productive member of the colony. She usually lives from one to three years.
…..No one told him what the boys and other kids were saying in school either. “Crazy girl, why’s your loony old man always sitting on the porch?” the boys teased Kate. “What’s he waiting for? The killer bees, killer bees from outer space.”
…..“Leave her alone,” Janie yelled and the boys laughed even harder. Kate didn’t say anything at all to them this time. Instead, she started to dance. She flapped her arms and kicked her legs up into the air. When the boys only laughed harder, Kate started to kick harder, flapping her arms, convulsing. Her eyes were closed and she shook and flailed, and wailed about. Not even the boys were laughing any longer. Kate was calling the bees, waiting for them to swarm in from the sky. She danced until she fell to the ground.
…..“Loony, loony, loony,” the other kids said and walked away.
…..Janie looked at Kate lying on the ground. “Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz,” she heard her say.
…..The queen bee is physically different from the other bees in the hive. Her body is longer with a much larger abdomen. Her mandibles house sharp teeth, unlike her toothless offspring, and she is armed with a curved, smooth stinger, that she can use repeatedly without endangering her own life. However, if the queen bee is new to a hive, and does not carry the hive’s scent, she will be killed by the colony.
…..Before the queen dies or leaves to start another hive, she lays an egg in a large queen cell. The larva is fed a diet consisting of only royal jelly, and after 16 days, a new queen emerges.
…..The queen bee was delivered on an afternoon after school had closed for the summer. Kate’s father waited on the porch for her arrival. The backyard was clear, empty of the standard two-story hive. There was no equipment, no place to keep the queen. She found no colony of bees waiting for her.
…..Kate’s father carried the crate to the backyard and Kate and Janie watched as he emptied the queen and her two attending worker bees onto the lawn. Within moments, the queen took flight on her maiden voyage to begin a new colony. The father and the girls watched and waited for the swarm of drones that would join her.
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Heather Momyer lives in Chicago where she teaches writing and literature and acts as the Nonfiction Editor of Requited. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Moria, A capella Zoo, 303 Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Robot Melon, and other journals.