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The day after Paige’s birth, Joan informed her bees that she and Norman had a healthy granddaughter. Telling the bees about major family events was an old folk custom that kept the bees from swarming, lowering productivity, becoming sick or aggressive, and dying; the folklore that said which benefit varied regionally. Through her life, Joan tried to find out what telling the bees prevented. She thought the custom inexplicably benefited bees.	Weaning sent Paige into anaphylactic shock—she was allergic to onions, garlic, and other alliums. She suffered mild to moderate allergic reactions from direct contact with alliums, either edible or decorative. But eating them was potentially lethal.	Her grandmother, Joan, told the bees about her hospitalization and her recovery. Then many times through Paige’s life, the bees learned of her allergic reactions.	Paige spent school day afternoons with Joan and her grandfather, Norman, while her parents worked. Joan found ways to protect her from allium residue; Paige ate honey made from allium pollen with no reaction, but the bees left particles behind, and beekeepers rarely needed Joan’s stock of bee protective clothing. Joan warned her hired beekeepers about Paige’s allergy. Joan banned her bees from pollinating alliums and they obeyed.	Joan gave Paige a beehive for Christmas, though her mother, Melanie, insisted Paige’s hive live on Joan’s land. Paige painted flowers on it.	Beginning with Paige’s colony, Joan told the bees why Paige would not work with them for the foreseeable future. Thousands of bees swarmed out and buzzed anxiously; most worker bees already foraged elsewhere.	&nbsp;	“Which mood is it?” Emma asked, walking up the path. Emma, Joan’s summer employee, recognized normal buzz, angry buzz, and cold buzz.	“Anxious, but now sad.” Joan’s hands were clasped behind her back, indicating she told the bees something.	“Why?”	Joan explained Paige’s condition in more detail to Emma than to the listening bees.	&nbsp;	Melanie and Paige’s father (who divorced over problems stemming from Melanie’s hatred of Joan’s bees) refused to take Paige out to eat. For her eleventh birthday, she wanted to eat at a restaurant, more than anything else her family offered. Following weeks of arguing, her parents and grandparents grudgingly searched for a safe restaurant.	Joan sold honey to the owner of a local restaurant, Ross Andrews, and she recommended him. She and Melanie inspected it. Ross strictly and aggressively followed laws regarding the fourteen major allergens, so he seemed able to manage Paige’s rare allergy. As a favor to Joan, Ross personally supervised Paige’s meal on her birthday—he avoided being sued, he wanted repeat customers, and he felt sorry for Paige.	Paige was fine. She loved the meal, which agreed with her. Her parents promised to return.	Next time, though her parents suggested she eat the same thing she ordered before, Paige wanted to try something new. According to the normal recipe, the dish’s onion was mingled with other ingredients. The food tasted new, which she wanted. Her parents’ meals lovingly tended towards the cautious, reliable, and boring side.	Paige ate part of her meal before developing symptoms. Quickly, she went into anaphylactic shock and from a lack of oxygen, suffered brain damage. She relapsed.	&nbsp;	Later in the day, most of Paige’s bees found Joan and Emma. They arranged themselves into Paige’s face.	“What about Paige?” Joan asked the bees.	The illiterate bees formed one of the patterns Joan routinely taught her bees: the cursive word ill. Normally, Emma justified the synchronized flying as pareidolia, but they formed very clear, purposeful patterns to certain people.	“Paige is ill,” Joan said. “And you can do nothing for her, but she will be all right. We have lots of work around the apiary. Let’s press on.”	The bees dispersed. To Emma, their body language seemed sympathetic, and, weirdly, the total effect of their body language and buzzing reminded her of children after a schoolyard fight.	Joan acknowledged that her bees behaved abnormally. She hid their behavior from most people, even beekeepers; Joan’s family and Emma were informed people.	&nbsp;	Promptly, Ross investigated the cause of Paige’s reaction. He grated against one of the chefs, who ignored him at every opportunity. Further, the chef was skeptical that every so-called allergic person requesting changes to a dish legitimately was allergic. The irritated chef cooked Paige’s meal.	Therefore, Ross fired the cook, wrote a strongly-worded letter of condemnation (just in case the chef asked for a reference), and apologized to Paige’s family. Melanie sued Ross’s restaurant. Ross immediately agreed to settle the suit, though he hated the prospect and thought that the cook, rather than his restaurant, was the problem.	&nbsp;	The queen bee wanted to find Paige and her attacker, whom the queen bee thought were in the same place. Generations of queen bees passed down knowledge. In this case, the queen bee thought because attackers of bees came to the beehive, attackers of humans went to the humanhive.	Scout bees peeked through the cottage’s windows, hoping to find Paige. Then the queen bee sent a scout bee escort wherever Joan went. The queen bee expected Joan to eventually lead the scout bees to Paige.	&nbsp;	Joan considered herself too old to drive; five minutes after she began driving, the passengers agreed with her. So, Emma drove Joan in her old pickup to buy supplies or make deliveries. Joan asked Emma to drive her to Ross’s restaurant. She normally canceled orders over the phone or through email, but the unusual circumstances warranted an in-person cancellation.	“The lawyer said we ought not to contact Ross, and Melanie won’t drive me,” Joan said.	“Will you get into trouble?” Emma normally left uncomfortable situations, worried they might get her into trouble.	“Oh, no,” Joan said, waving the thought aside. “I simply shan’t sell honey to Ross.”	Emma thought of a good reason to refuse. “What about the police?”	“Thankfully, she won’t die, or they would investigate,” Joan said.	“And you won’t threaten Mr. Andrews or something?”	“Vengeance isn’t Christian.”	That seemed like a good trouble preventative and Emma agreed. She thought the unfamiliarity of her current situation made her uncomfortable.	Joan’s hearing aid blocked out the sound of bees buzzing onto her hat and off it and towards the restaurant. She wore false flowers in her hat to shelter bees from the elements, and in her purse she carried an emergency vial of water and another of sugar syrup.	While waiting for Joan, Emma read Joan’s extensive apiary notes. Anything else felt lazy and the notes interested her mildly. She liked her job, Joan, and Norman; Paige annoyed her a little bit, and some days she disliked Melanie. Apiculture appealed to Emma more than the few other jobs sporadically available.	Also, Melissa (Joan and Norman’s daughter and Melanie’s half-sister) paid Emma to tend her bees year-round and mail her the produce every autumn. Melissa lived in Arizona, a climate capable of scorching the dark European honey bees, so Joan put Melissa’s bees next to Paige’s hive. Melissa’s bees showed the same odd traits as Joan and Paige’s.	Emma noticed the fuzzy brown scout bees flying hastily back to the pickup.	“A couple scout bees want to talk to you,” Emma said. “Behind you.”	Joan turned around. “Did you wish to show me something?”	The bees flew side-to-side, meaning no, then buzzed towards Joan’s hat.	“Are they aboard?” Joan bent her head towards Emma.	“Yeah,” Emma said.	“Funny bees wanted an outing,” Joan said, lovingly. “But curious they came on a rainy day. We must bring them back on a nice day. Perhaps they wanted out of the rain today, but want to show me something later.”	Joan had a bad rheumatic day and the trip wore her out; she dozed in a garden chair with a blanket and hot water bottle. In such circumstances, Emma maintained the hives independently, but because Emma was a minor, Joan supervised with a walkie-talkie. Emma considered it silly. When Emma and Joan worked on different acres, Emma rarely asked her a difficult question over the walkie-talkie or for help in person. She had more experience than most other beekeepers Joan trained.	Emma noticed nothing unusual about the bees, or at least, nothing identifiable. Daily, large numbers of bees practiced pictures or synchronized flying and it could be confusing to humans. It made perfect sense to bees and was part of their extraordinary behavior. She re-checked the practicing bees regularly because the bees figured out how to communicate their problem. Whenever Emma approached Paige’s bees, she had the impression they were Behaving Themselves, like cheaters when a teacher looked over. Emma never saw a specific shape or a fragment, just lines, swirls, and blobs, which faded as she watched.	The weather improved and Joan felt much better. She went to the apiary shed every morning to prepare for the day. Technically, her entire farm was an apiary, but “apiary shed” or “apiary” referred to a specific outbuilding, distinct from “the shed,” which tidily held equipment, supplies, tools, and the like, with plenty of space for Joan’s bee extraction gear and building hives. She stopped extracting bees long ago and building hives several years ago.	The shed came with the farm, but Norman wanted Joan to have a nicer outhouse. The apiary was somewhere between a business office and study and contained everything Joan needed to sell honey, from packing to planning. It also housed her extensive books and notes. She processed honey and beeswax in an adjoining room. That year, Joan stopped selling propolis, royal jelly, and other products.	Paige’s bees hovered outside the glass and several tapped on it in unison to attract her attention, so Joan went outside.	“Now you had something to tell me?” Joan asked the bees.	Just then, Emma came round the side of the pastel pink apiary shed. Slowly, the swarm formed Ross’s face and a simple flower pattern: a five-pointed blossom, a couple of pointed leaves, and a cluster of circles. She recognized the deadly nightshade symbol from Joan’s Bee Phrasebook. Joan described and photographed it, but now Emma saw it live for the first and only time. According to Joan, bees collected pollen of some poisonous plants, ate the resulting honey, and were fine; the honey caused plenty of harm to people. As far as Emma knew, bees (other than Joan's) had absolutely no idea that certain plants poisoned humans. So, Joan taught her bees about local poisonous plants, including ones which made bees sick.	“No, no poisoned honey,” Joan said, resisting the urge to flap the bees away, since, understandably, the sweetest bee hated being hit and felt quite insulted and threatened. “We can’t poison him. Vengeance isn’t Christian. Now stop it! Don’t make honey from deadly nightshade. Shoo!”	The bees’ shapes disappeared and the swarm flew to the hive.	Joan turned to return to the apiary shed and saw Emma. “Did you see them?” Joan asked.	“Was that Mr. Andrews’ face?” Emma asked.	“Yes, I believe it was,” Joan said, flustered. “But I told them not to hurt him. And they listen to me.”	“It looked like him and deadly nightshade.”	“And I’ve warned them about such clear pictures."	“Did he poison Paige?”	“She had an allergic reaction to onions. And I told them not to hurt him.”	Emma did not want to assume Mr. Andrews' face and deadly nightshade held together meant poison him, but if Joan believed it, she was prepared to. She asked, “Should we warn him?”	“They listen to me, and he might think it a threat,” Joan said. “I’d tell the police, but they don’t believe bees premeditate murder.”	"A policeman might need to see the bees’ patterns to believe it. What happens when forensics trace the bees to you?”	“The bees shan’t kill Ross.”	“How do you know?”	“They don’t know his address, and their little wings would give out. You needn’t worry yourself about Ross. I must speak to Norman quickly, but you can begin work.”	Norman comforted Joan. In his experience, the bees obeyed Joan. He agreed that the bees were intelligent and emotional—certainly good planners and able to attack other bees and honey eaters—but he thought premeditated murder was too complicated and human.

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The Queen Bee

jmsparrow

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Julia Marie Sparrow

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