The queen bee dispatched thousands and thousands of honeybees to sting Ross to death for attacking Paige. The bees traveled slowly, stopping frequently to eat nectar and pollen or drink at the river. They spent the night in a hollow tree. The bees intended to reach the restaurant the next day, but Ross biked past them. As the bees chased him, he called Joan, the local bee authority.

Joan dressed quickly, hurried to the bee shed for a bee suit, and checked on Paige’s hive.

Upon opening the hive, Joan estimated 20,000 bees were chasing Ross, and the present bees buzzed irritably. The bee queen scuttled into a corner. Joan placed her inside the jar, which had holes punched in the lid.

Several dozen bees flew from the hive and landed on Joan’s hands.

“Did you send bees to sting Ross?” Joan asked.

The queen bee flew up and down steadily, a positive answer.

As soon as Joan unscrewed the lid, the bees flew from her hands.

Approximately 40,000 bees followed Joan to the cottage but hovered outside. Joan prohibited bees inside the cottage. In order of against whom the bees were most likely to hold a grudge, Joan worried about Melanie, Emma, Norman, Paige, herself, and anybody else who interfered with the bees. Joan’s bees defined “interfering” as “anything humans do to the hive,” but, on account of the benefits and stability, they tolerated the humans’ ignorance of proper hives and colonies.

Joan required an informed person of an age of majority to drive the pickup. She called Melanie, the closest suitable person, saying there was a rather serious, peculiar bee emergency. Then Joan called Emma to warn her the bees were chasing Ross and, in case the bees threatened any human, Joan canceled the day’s usual work.

Melanie hurried to Joan’s cottage, bringing along anti-bee weapons from her attic, while Joan collected her things and Ross hid from the bees in a petrol station restroom. On the drive, Joan explained the situation to Melanie. Ross listened over the phone and updated them about the bees.

“We need to kill the bees,” Melanie snapped.

“Once we rescue Ross, the swarm will go home,” Joan said, already preparing to exterminate them before they found another way to kill Ross.

“The swarm will follow him,” Melanie said.

“But Ross will come to my cottage and the bees will want to rest their weary exoskeletons in their hive.”

“When do we trap them?”

“We shan’t discuss it here.”

“Why? Because the bees might overhear?” Melanie asked, rolling her eyes.

Melanie sarcastically identified the real reason. Joan thought the bees understood speech enough to report extermination plans existed. She said, “We need to rescue Ross first.”

“Killing the bees will rescue him,” Melanie said.

“I agree with Melanie,” Ross said.

“We shall do one thing at a time and we need time indoors, in the same room, to gather our thoughts,” Joan said.

“Oh, we have two thoughts between the three of us. Kill the bees or let them kill Ross,” Melanie said.

The bees examined the petrol station for entrances and coincidentally blocked the automatic doors, which they thought were windows. How humans entered the hive baffled them. Other customers drove away to a different petrol station or else the bees would have learned to activate the doors.

Joan sucked the bees into her bee vacuum, then emptied the bees into a swarm box with a plugged hole cut in the top. She blocked the entrance, placed a funnel into the hole, and Melanie gleefully flooded the hive with gallons of soapy water, drowning the bees.

The extermination saddened Joan, but she believed it was right and necessary. Ross wanted to know why she tricked the bees and Joan promised to explain once he wore a bee suit and sheltered in a safe place—the closet under her stairs. Melanie and Joan intended to tape up the cottage’s vents to protect him from an incursion and drew the curtains and blinds.

 

Dressed in extra layers, Emma approached the cottage’s front door. She walked calmly and quietly around the house to investigate. Most bees bearded the walls and windowsills. Bees buzzed around the front and back doors and before both stories’ windows. Individual bees hovered between the clusters and other bees snacked on Joan and Norman’s flowers or napped inside them.

Emma forced herself to smile but remembered the bees smelled alarm pheromones. With fake cheeriness, she said, “Hello, bees! It’s just me, Emma.”

The bees turned to look at her.

“Excuse me, please.”

The bees flew aside enough for her to reach the door. She turned the locked knob—and expected trouble. Joan and Norman never locked their doors, but Joan gave Emma a key for emergencies, and when Melanie automatically locked the door. Emma fumbled with the lock, and while pushing it open, took one large step to enter the hall, and then slammed the door behind herself, locked it, and leaned against it.

Melanie, Joan, and Norman were in the hall next to the cupboard under the stairs, but they stopped arguing and looked at her for a second. Simultaneously, Joan said, “Emma, I told you to stay home,” and Melanie yelled, “I locked the door and it was supposed to stay locked!” and Norman said, “Don’t yell at Emma!”

With no idea what Melanie referred to and positive that Emma had nothing to do with it, Emma yelled, “I didn’t know!” Emma had controlled herself around Melanie very well for years and Melanie yelled at her first. She unwrapped the plaid scarf from her head.

A muffled man’s voice from the cupboard under the stairs called, “What’s going on? Did they get into the cottage?”

Discombobulated, Emma looked around for Ross, as Melanie examined her for bees.

“How did you unlock the door?” Melanie asked.

“I gave her a key,” Joan said.

“I found a swarm,” Emma said because it was her only explainable recent experience.

“We are quite aware of the swarms,” Joan said.

“Did they get in?” Ross asked.

“Who is in the cupboard?” Emma asked.

“Ross Andrews,” Melanie groaned.

“This morning has been a bit of an ordeal for Ross,” Norman said.

 “Emma, best stay here and leave the door shut,” Joan said.

“Right,” Emma said.

“And put your winter things in the living room before you overheat. I heard you tell your mother about skipping work. Where does she think you are?”

“I’m here to help out since your family might be busy with Paige.”

Ross’s demands for an explanation of the bees’ behavior (they showed him a picture of Paige’s face) delayed the argument, and just as it began, Emma interrupted it. Now the adults continued.

Emma obeyed and sat on the couch, playing a game on her phone with headphones on. Still, she heard Melanie, Joan, and Norman, and through most of the discussion, the living room and cupboard radiated awkward silence. Initially, convincing Melanie she misinterpreted Joan’s behavior was the hard part, and until Melanie calmed down, nobody could do anything about the bees.

To everybody’s surprise and Melanie’s indignation, Ross said that assuming the bees were as weird as they seemed, Joan’s earlier actions made sense. He wanted to know, since Joan did not sic the bees on him, how the bees found him. In retrospect, Emma realized the bees in Joan’s hat acquired Ross’s face and location. Joan had forgotten the incident, but once Emma mentioned them, she and the others, except for Ross, thought it a good explanation.

“I want to ask a question that you might find a bit rude,” Ross said.

“Ask away,” Joan said.

“How do I know you aren’t trying to kill me?” Ross asked. “No offense.”

“Excellent question,” Joan said. “Vengeance isn’t Christian.”

“The law says we can sue you,” Melanie said.

“You and the bees ought to be justly punished, but we shan’t seek revenge. And we forgive your cook and your business.”

Ross asked, “Enough to drop the suit?”

“No,” Melanie snapped.

“Thought as much. So if you did not tell the bees to attack me, why did they?”

Joan had told the bees the family sued the restaurant owned by Ross Andrews. Because the bees lacked the concept of suing, she theorized they thought Ross himself attacked Paige. Mentioning the chef at this point might provoke the bees to attack another victim, so the bees needed to think Ross attacked Paige. The humans unanimously agreed the chef and Ross deserved to live.

Also, Joan wondered if the queen bee thought she attacked another queen bee: Ross. If the queen bee knew the restaurant had employees, the employees could be considered worker bees. When a colony of bees entered another, colonized hive, the queen bees fought each other. Joan’s bees took over hives when they deemed it necessary, bringing along their queen to depose the other one, but Joan frowned upon it. Normal bees stole honey, requiring several thousand bees to assault the hive, but Joan’s bees preferred signaling her. She was fairly confident her bees did not revenge wrongs amongst themselves.

Joan wished that when the bees suggested poisoning Ross, she told the bees, “Don’t kill Ross,” which sounded ominous and threatening to Ross, who required further assurances Auntie Joan was not a murderer. Fortunately, her reputation for decades and her descriptions of the bees’ abnormal behavior convinced Ross she told the truth.

“We shall kill Paige’s bees,” Joan said.

“Can I help?” Emma asked.

“I ought not to ask a minor.”

Joan intended to limit provocations to chaos. A horde of 40,000 stinging bees alarmed her. The queen bee might plan a stinging ambush or find another murder method. And, like anybody when threatened, the bees might hide and find Ross before Joan and Melanie found them, or, they might attack immediately before Joan carried out her threat. If the bees naturally split off into groups, Joan intended to exterminate each group. But she worried about scattering the bees—even a hundred missing bees stinging the right places threatened Ross’s life.

Norman scootered to Emma as Joan and Melanie went into the kitchen.

“Hi,” Emma said.

“Hello,” Norman said. “Joan gave you the day off.”

“I don’t want you to lie to your mum.”

“But I would be helping, and we can’t let the bees kill Mr. Andrews, so it isn’t a bad lie.”

“Paige can’t come over for a few months and her mother gave me a list of approved websites. Could you please show me how to use them?”

“Sure.”

While Emma helped Norman with things obvious to her, Joan and Melanie worked out a decent plan that terrified Ross as much as being stung to death by bees.

Reluctantly, Joan’s plans included Emma, simply because Melissa was unavailable. Melissa studied depictions of dragonflies on Zuni pottery in the United States and not only would she reach the cottage long after Emma’s 11:00 PM curfew, but the bees refused to let Emma leave, even when Joan asked. Standing for a few minutes or walking a short distance exhausted Norman, limiting his usefulness. Therefore, Norman promised to supervise and protect Emma while she participated in a physically challenging part of the plans.