I lowered the veil on my hat and went inside the gate with my lit smoker, not that I ever needed it. It was wise to approach hives from the side so that the guard bees wouldn’t be alarmed. I took the cinder block off the top of the first hive and then removed the roof. I kept my smoker handy so that if, on that rare occasion, my girls seemed agitated, a gentle cloud of pine and sage could calm them. One by one, I lifted the full frames. The brood was already growing like mad. Where was the queen? And why was she hiding from me? Another omen.

“Your queen’s sure getting busy early this year!” I said, talking to my bees. “Yes, indeedy!”

I replaced the frames and covered the hive, checking the ground for fire ant mounds. There were none that I could find. I filled a pan with water so the bees would have plenty to drink.

There were many reasons and even more suspicions about why you should talk to your bees, too many to ignore. I told them about my mother’s illnesses, which I felt positive were psychosomatic, and about my sister’s continuing windfall, which bordered on the obnoxious. Sometimes I made up songs to sing to them, like Leslie’s going to Bangkok and Holly’s staying home. Leslie’s got a brand-new Benz and Holly’s staying home. I was so grateful no one could hear me, but didn’t everyone need a place to vent and be silly? I’d heard stories about people’s bees swarming when they were left out of the family loop. I hoped my bees had a sense of me as a part of their colony. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt like they knew me. I had enough pluff mud in my veins to consider the possibility of almost anything. Although experience told me that while bees are unbelievably smart about so many things, they don’t have emotions in the same way we do. At least not individually. But there is such a thing as hive mentality. I’d seen hard evidence of it many times over the years.

A metal screen door slammed with a clang and inside of a minute, Archie’s two little boys, whom I adored, were hanging over my apiary fence. Our house was across the street from theirs on a dead-end road where we had very little traffic. My house backed up to the marsh, which made for spectacular sunrises.

“Here come both sides of my heart!” I whispered to my honey bees.

“Hey! Mith Holly!”

“Hey yourself, Mr. Tyler!”