Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
“There’s a limb hitting the house,” I said, feeling as though I was repeating myself.
“Is there?” he asked, taking too big a sip and wincing as the hot water burned him.
“Don’t you hear that?”
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Ezra cocked his head, listening intently to the steady rhythm permeating the house. His eyes crinkled and he began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sadie asked. Her eyebrows were set in one sharp line across her face.
“That’s no tree. Haven’t you silly geese looked outside this morning?”
Like a slow-moving herd, we wandered onto the porch, clutching at blankets and coat flaps.
“See?” he asked.
I peered into the yard. Morning’s light cast weak silvery beams across the covered fields. The yard sparkled, pretty until I caught sight of Ezra’s bloody footprints marring its purity.
“I don’t see anything,” I admitted.
“There,” he said, pointing to the porch’s overhang.
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Ezra was right.
It wasn’t a branch.
It wasn’t the wind.
Drops of water trickled off the jagged teeth of icicles hanging from the roof. They fell to the wooden planks below with metronomic persistence.
Hope leapt high in my throat.
Tap, tap, tap.
“The snow is melting,” Ezra said needlessly. “It’s finally spring.”
“Easy now,” I cautioned. I could barely make out Merry’s profile beneath the enormous brim of Papa’s hat. The veil shrouded her frame with such excess that not even the bright afternoon sunlight could penetrate its folds.
“I don’t think I’m doing this right.” Her voice was thin and reedy; she was clearly unhappy with the situation. “Can’t we wait a few more days?”
“It’s finally warm enough to open the boxes. We need to see if the queens made it through the winter.”
I’d been hunting for eggs in the chicken coop that morning when a honeybee had landed on the lawn of my sleeve, preening its wings as if to say hello. It was the first bee I’d seen since snowfall, and I took it as a sign the hives were ready for inspection. After breakfast, I’d enlisted Merry, even letting her choose which duty she’d prefer—the smoker or handling the hive frames.
“I can’t pick the frames up myself,” she’d protested.
“Then the smoker is all yours.”
I’d been so certain we’d be able to handle the job ourselves, but as she struggled with the metal can and bellows, I wondered if I ought to have asked Ezra or Thomas.
Surprisingly, neither of them had shown much interest in the bees. Ezra claimed they were both terribly allergic to the stings. When I’d asked how he’d managed to grow up in a house of apiarists, he’d laughed.
“Very carefully.”
“Just a little more smoke along the bottom board,” I instructed now, trying to sound confident. I slowly counted to twenty—just as I remembered seeing Papa do—and lifted the inner cover.
A mass of bees greeted us, swarming around the last of the winter sugar cakes. Only a few chunks remained, and my heart swelled. This hive had not only survived the winter but—from the initial inspection—it had thrived. Using the chisel, I freed several of the super frames, sweeping my eyes over them. Most of the combs were a pale yellow, filled with honey created by the sugar that the bees had ingested over the winter. There was a smattering of dark orange cells—combs full of pollen and bee bread. It was strange to see so few of them, but it had been a hard, long winter and the bees were only now beginning to venture into the world again. Though our fields remained barren, flowers were blooming all over the valley. They’d be able to store more pollen soon, I was sure of it.
“Let’s check the brood box before we clean the bottom boards,” I said, removing the top layer, my arms trembling.
Merry doused the lower region, and I checked the brood frames, cheered to see capped cells along the outer edges. This hive’s queen was alive and busy laying eggs. Several queen caps stuck out from the comb, like metastasizing toadstools, but there was no royal jelly in them or larvae—nothing to signal a problem with the current queen. The last traces of my anxiety slipped away.
With a grunt, I hoisted the brood box free of the base board and set it to the side as gently as I could manage. The box had to weigh at least a hundred pounds.
“Oh,” Merry said, peering across the floor of the hive. It was littered with dead bees.
“It’s okay,” I said, reassuring her as much as myself. “Not every bee was going to survive the winter, and it was too cold for the undertakers to remove the bodies. We’ll clean out the bottom, then put everything back together.”
Wax caps dotted the floor, and there was a blue hue in one corner. It wasn’t unusual for mold to form in the winter months, when the hive was less ventilated, trapping the excess humidity inside. It wasn’t a good sight to see, but I was grateful it was only here, where condensation must have pooled, and not within the upper frames.
We set to work, shaking out the dead and scraping off the mold. Once the first hive was restored, we moved on to the next one, and the one after that, and the one after, until all five colonies had been inspected. The sun was beginning to dip behind the mountains as I covered the final hive with a contented sigh.
Grabbing Merry in a playful hug, I pressed a quick kiss to the top of her hat. “We did it,” I breathed with relief. “We got the bees through winter.”
“Long day’s work, ladies?” a voice called out across the side yard.
Merry pulled up the edge of her veil to better see the tall figure leaning against a cottonwood tree. “Whitaker!” she exclaimed, and my stomach plummeted joyfully into my boots.
We hadn’t seen him since Christmas. Deep snows and wicked blizzard winds had kept him away. I’d agonized over our separation. What the poets wrote was true: absence did make the heart grow fonder. Fonder and fanciful and wholly prone to fits of yearning and anguish.
But he was here now. Finally.
“Is it safe to approach?” he asked as we gathered our tools. “I didn’t want to agitate the bees.”
“The covers are on—you’re just fine,” I said, reaching under my veil to push away an errant lock of hair. I’d daydreamed countless variations of our reunion, but I’d never been wearing a bee hat in any of them. “You’ll be fine,” I amended, heat flooding my cheeks as I tried tempering my grin. Every fiber in me ached to throw my arms around him, but Merry’s presence held me in check.