Queen Bee Read online

  Dedication

  For Peter

  Epigraph

  I eat my peas with honey

  I’ve done it all my life

  It makes the peas taste funny

  But it keeps them on the knife!

  —ANONYMOUS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Meet Me, Holly McNee Jensen

  Chapter 2: Bee Calm

  Chapter 3: Buzzing Along

  Chapter 4: Now What?

  Chapter 5: All the Buzz

  Chapter 6: Bee Truthful

  Chapter 7: Bermuda Triangle

  Chapter 8: Bee Team

  Chapter 9: Leslie Takes the Mike

  Chapter 10: Holly Grabs the Mike Back

  Chapter 11: The Boys

  Chapter 12: Roofie

  Chapter 13: Any Objections?

  Chapter 14: The Vapors

  Chapter 15: Bliss Week

  Chapter 16: Bee Advised

  Chapter 17: Bee Ware

  Chapter 18: Expanding Horizons

  Chapter 19: Leslie and Cher

  Chapter 20: Wigged Out

  Chapter 21: Splash!

  Chapter 22: The Vapors (Part 2)

  Chapter 23: Bee Have

  Chapter 24: Leslie, the QB, and Vegas

  Chapter 25: Gone Boys

  Chapter 26: Char

  Chapter 27: Ding-Dong

  Chapter 28: Bee Cool

  Chapter 29: Strut Yo Stuff, Sugah

  Chapter 30: Bee at Peace

  Chapter 31: Stop and Smell the Roses

  Chapter 32: Good to Bee

  Chapter 33: Bee Leave

  Chapter 34: Bee Happy

  Chapter 35: Forever Bee

  Chapter 36: Bee Joyful

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Dorothea Benton Frank

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Of all the stories I’ve ever told you, this is the one that you’re going to remember. This is the one. Hopefully large parts of this will entertain you, because sometimes life goes right off the rails somewhere between hilarity and the absurd and somehow it always happens in my orbit. But there is another story within these pages that might bother you. I know this because this story haunts me. It’s the one I can’t forget.

  I told myself that I should’ve done something to intervene earlier. But it wasn’t my place. I tried polite conversation, I tried impolite conversation. No one would hear me. It bothers me that there was a part of me that didn’t want to see, didn’t want to get involved. Was there that part of me? Does that make me complicit? Heaven knows that people in general can rationalize the most egregious behavior in the name of religion, love, the alleged greater good of mankind, or just because whatever it is they’re lobbying for is good for them.

  For all you know about me, even those I’ve met in passing, you know I’m not a troublemaker or someone who exaggerates the truth. Okay, maybe I’ll embellish a little. But generally, you don’t have to make things bigger or more fantastic than they are. Reality has so many surprises and unbelievable situations, it’s okay to just lay down the bones.

  Maybe I want to tell you this story as a kind of cautionary tale. At the end of the day, you must live with who you’ve allowed yourself to become. But before you close your eyes for the last time, there will be a day of reckoning, even if it’s not the kind we’ve been taught to expect.

  It has taken me a long time to piece together the real truth of what happened, to rationalize that perhaps I didn’t have a hand in all of it. But then, I did. Actually, I think you could easily lay half of what happened at my feet. But I digress.

  This is a magical tale of love and redemption, of how to heal broken spirits, and most of all, why it’s all right to hope for and believe in miracles. It’s not just a Lowcountry thing. If this could happen to me, it could surely happen to you.

  I said, “People been thinking about and fascinated by bees since forever.”

  “Yeah?” the boys said. “Like who?”

  “How about this? The bee is more honored than other animals not because she labors, but because she labors for others. That was said by Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople. He lived from 349 to 407 A.D.”

  “That’s old,” Tyler said.

  Chapter One

  Meet Me, Holly McNee Jensen

  Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina

  February 2017

  I was standing on our back porch hanging wet dish towels on a swing-arm gizmo, having just finished cleaning up after breakfast. Momma was headed back to bed, where she lived 90 percent of the time, ever since Leslie got married and moved to Ohio with weird Charlie.

  I stepped outside and scanned the yard. Mother Nature was clearly losing it, one marble at a time. It was a Friday morning in the middle of February and eighty-something degrees. Eighty-something degrees! When I was a child on this sleepy island, I would’ve been wearing an overcoat, a hat, and maybe a neck scarf and gloves. I’d be shivering and waiting for the ramshackle school bus to stop at the corner and take me and a hundred other kids to Catholic school, where I would be made to tremble over the painful retribution to come for sins I had yet to commit. Now, people were all over the island, a parade of surfboards and coolers disappearing over the dunes, and on the beach, people half-naked, slathered with suntan lotion, running around like idiots.

  Didn’t anyone know it was supposed to be winter? And no, I wasn’t cranky. There it was! Proof! Climate change.

  Flowers that weren’t expected to bloom for another six weeks decorated our yard in huge clumps and stands of color. Daylilies, Shasta daisies, and purple smoke reared their pretty heads toward the morning sun and opened wide. My honey bees, who were supposed to be huddled in winter mode, getting their well-deserved beauty rest, had been sending out scouts from the hive all week long to see what was going on. They had to be very confused. I know I was. Something was seriously wrong.

  But confused or not, my bees needed attention. I was going to check the hives for the early arrival of—what else—Varroa mites. I was super picky about hive health. These nasty mites were awful! All over the country, varroa mites, along with hive beetles, not to mention pesticides, were trying to put honey bees on the extinct list. If that happened, God forbid, the whole planet would be doomed to starvation. Maurice Maeterlinck said without honey bees, mankind only had four years and then, forget it. Doomsday.

  I headed for the backyard shed where I kept my beekeeper suit. Normally, I wouldn’t see mites until late summer. But everything seemed so off kilter, I was just being extra vigilant.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I called out to my mother.

  “WHAT?” she screeched back.

  Put in your hearing aids, I thought. She probably didn’t even know where they were.

  “I said, I’m going to check the hives!”

  “Whatever! Suit yourself! Don’t be gone long. I’m getting hungry!”

  Oh, eat a can of beans, I thought. Didn’t I just feed her? She drove me crazy. My mother, Katherine McNee Jensen, was one colossal pain in the derriere. She kept tabs on me like I was a child (which I was not) and treated me like her personal maid (which I was). If I didn’t have a garden and hives to tend and a volunteer job at the library, I’d go right off the deep end. I had been trying to get a teaching job at Sullivan’s Island Elementary School for years, and the best I could ever seem to get was the occasional substitute job. Because the island was so popular, there was probably a longer waiting list for teaching positions there than there was anywhere else in the
state. And I sold my honey at the island’s farmers market and sometimes at the farmers market in Mount Pleasant because I harvested over a hundred pounds, sometimes much more, every year. But eight dollars a jar wasn’t going to make me rich. Eventually, I’d get a break.

  I let the wooden screen door slam behind me with a loud thwack and took a long, slow, deep breath. Rise above! And how was I ever going to get out of her house and make a life for myself? I was going nowhere until she did. So, for now, I was a bachelorette, keeping my considerable favors under wraps until the right man came along. The thought of me having considerable favors worth keeping under wraps made me smile. Well, to be completely honest, many right men had come along, but they kept going, straight to the welcoming arms of my sister, Leslie. And anyway, now I had my neighbor Archie’s little boys to keep me busy. I preferred children to adults any day of the week. I’ll get to them in a moment. There’s so much to tell you.

  I want to introduce you to my bees first. Everyone knows honey bees are good for the environment, but few people know why or how their hives are organized. There’s a division of labor for every stage of a honey bee’s life. Every bee has his or her job to do to ensure they continue to coexist as one. Everything they do is to preserve the colony. Humanity could take a few lessons from them. You’ll see what I mean as time goes on, the same way I came to gradually understand them. In any case, I loved the time I spent with my bees because, despite their intense activity, it was so serene. Serenity was in short supply around here. The good news was that there was zero chance of Momma following me out to the apiary. She wouldn’t come near the hives out of fear. I keep telling her she’s not sweet enough to sting. She doesn’t think that’s funny.

  The apiary was in the back corner of our yard, surrounded by a pale blue picket fence, painted thusly to keep out the haints. Haints is a Gullah word for haunts or ghosts. In this part of the world, the Lowcountry of South Carolina, it was generally accepted that a thoughtful application of blue paint would keep a whole array of spirits at bay, ranging from the mischievous ilk to the downright evil. I just happened to like the color. The fence was covered on the inside perimeter with clear mesh to thwart other enemies of the hive—mainly raccoons. My hives were aqua, pale pink, and pale peach. The pastel colors made me feel like I was taking a short trip to Bermuda, and when I looked at them it always lifted my spirits.

  I looked up to see the UPS truck pull up to our curb. Andy, our regular UPS deliveryman, hopped off his truck and called out to me.

  “Hey, Miss Holly! Sure is a fine day!”

  “Yes, it is!” I called back because I didn’t want to get into a whole conversation about planet Earth actually having a meltdown. “Your rear passenger tire is about to blow, you know.”

  “I’ll get that checked out! Thanks for the warning!” he called back to me. “I’ll just throw this on the porch?”

  “That’s fine!”

  It was probably something from QVC that Momma ordered. That’s what she did all day. Sat up in her big bed and watched QVC and ordered large housedresses and sweats decorated with kittens and mermaids, which she thought were stylish and appropriate for church, on the rare occasion that she actually attended Mass. I’m not judging. Okay, maybe I am.

  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!”

  Archie and Carin MacLean had bought their house and moved in right after they were married. Two years later, Tyler came along. Tyler was now seven, soon to be eight; Hunter, his younger brother, was five. Carin, their mother, had died not long ago in a tragic automobile accident, leaving them in Archie’s flustered care, in my care on occasion, and sometimes in extended day care at the island school. Archie kept saying he was going to hire someone to help him full-time with the house and the boys, but that kind of help was so difficult to find and then of course, to trust. For my part? I loved those little fellas like they were my own, and I couldn’t understand why he didn’t hire me. But he didn’t have to, because I sort of did the job for free.

  Tyler had curly hair the color of a newly minted penny, and matching freckles of all sizes danced all across his nose and cheeks. He was just adorable and curious about everything. He was also missing four teeth, making him even more precious as he struggled to speak clearly.

  “Hey, Miss Holly! Can we see the bees?”

  And that was from Hunter, born with an inner daredevil and who was more curious and reckless than his older brother. Hunter’s thick, coarse black hair could not be tamed and his blue eyes were a window. From the day he was born, we always said he’d be president of something big or lead a life of crime. He always had at least one Band-Aid on him somewhere. A badge of courage.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “What are y’all doing home today?”

  “Parent tea-ther meetings,” Tyler said.

  “Ah! I wondered why your daddy’s car was in the driveway. Okay, you both stand right there and I’ll show you what’s going on.”

  I drew an imaginary line across the grass. They saluted me and my heart clenched. Tyler and Hunter were just too cute.

  I stepped to the edge of the apiary, lifted my veil, and closed the gate. I took my water glass and turned it upside down, capturing a honey bee that was sitting on the roof. Then I slid her into the palm of my hand. My gloves were made of heavy suede and I knew there wasn’t a bee among them whose stinger could penetrate the tough cowhide.

  “Do either one of you have a magnifying glass?” I asked.

  “I do!” Tyler said. “Should I go get it?”

  “Yep!” I said. “Quickly!”

  Tyler disappeared inside the house and Hunter stared at me like I had just dropped down from the moon.

  “Why are you wearing that funny outfit?” he said.

  “You know why, young man. So that I don’t g
et stung.”

  “Momma always said you shouldn’t play with bees. If you’re ’lergic you could get Anna flappic shock and die!”

  “She was right, sweetheart. Anaphylactic. And yes, you could. But honey bees are pretty tame and they only sting when they feel threatened.”

  “What about bumblebees?”

  “The same. They are both pollinators, and all they want is nectar and pollen. But don’t get in their way! Then we’d have a problem.”

  “What about wasps and yellowjackets?”

  “Ah! They’re bugs of another color! Mean as the dickens! They can be very aggressive. Never, ever, ever touch their nests. But honey bees? Do you know they’re the only bugs who make food for humans?”

  “They are? What about crickets? Daddy told me people eat crickets because they’re good for you.”

  “Really? My goodness! I’d have to be awfully hungry to eat a cricket,” I said and wondered if they sat around all night watching National Geographic specials on television. “Well, if your daddy said it then I’m sure it’s true.” His daddy Archie was so good looking he made me stutter and blush. He was also a Harvard Ph.D. Not exactly a dummy. “But we don’t eat honey bees. They make food for us. Do you see the difference?”

  “Uh-huh.” Hunter smiled at me and my heart melted. “If you ate a bee you might get stung in the tongue!”

  “There’s no might about it!” I said and smiled at him. “Or in your tummy!”

  Slam!

  Tyler was headed back our way. I took the magnifying glass from him.

  “Tyler? Hold my glass in place so this little bee doesn’t fly away. Okay, gentlemen, see there? Look at that! Honey bees are very hairy around the perimeter of their eyeballs. And their eyes have over five thousand prisms! Isn’t that cool?”

  “Yeah! Wow!” they both said together.

  “Here’s a hairy eyeball,” Hunter said. He stepped back into a warriorlike stance, set his jaw firmly, and frowned at me, staring without blinking.

  “That’s also known as stink-eye,” I said with a giggle.

  Tyler said, “How come they have hairy eyeballs?”