Chapter Four
The beekeeper drove up in a truck with a girl in the passenger seat and a black dog hanging out the back window.
If it weren’t for the name, Marsden Apiaries, Cassie might have assumed he’d blundered up the driveway by mistake.
She wondered briefly if he always carted around the whole family, but it didn’t matter. At least he’d come.
He didn’t exit his truck immediately. He stayed put for a minute, talking to the girl, who Cassie assumed was his daughter. Pretty, with white-blond hair, maybe eleven or twelve.
“Don’t know why you had to bring someone out,” her dad groused.
He’d been babysitting the bees all afternoon, spraying them with sugar water and moving them into deeper shade when the sun hit the front of the house.
“All I need is another hive. I could’ve called a few people.
I don’t need this guy telling me how to run my bees. ”
“Well he’s here now, so let’s just see what he has to say. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” She gently nudged her father off the porch as the beekeeper got out of his truck.
“Glenn Marsden,” he said, extending a hand. “I guess I talked to you earlier.”
“Thanks so much for coming.” Cassie shook his hand. “This is my father, Stuart Linden.” She’d imagined someone older, a little fusty, with a pot belly, who puttered around the yard puffing smoke and whispering to the bees.
Glenn Marsden was not the least bit fusty.
He appeared about her age, maybe a few years younger.
And fit. Like he worked outside for a living, which come to think of it, he did.
Although beekeeping didn’t seem rigorous enough to look the way he did.
Then again, hefting all those hives was hard work.
He was good-looking in an unselfconscious way.
Jeans and work boots, hair that might once have been light like his daughter’s but was starting to gray.
She was used to Phil and the lawyers she worked with, pasty all of them, with bellies gone soft from too many lunches out.
Glenn Marsden didn’t look like he had much use for fancy lunches.
He probably grabbed a sandwich on the run.
“We’ve been—” she began, but he stepped past her to squat next to the box of bees.
“How long have they been here?”
“Oh, a couple of hours,” her dad said.
“More than a couple,” Cassie put in, vaguely annoyed Marsden had cut her off. If he was one of those men who didn’t listen to women they were going to have problems. “They came this morning, remember Dad?”
Marsden ran a finger along the rim of the box. “You give them any food?”
“Sugar water.” Her dad seemed relieved to recall this.
Marsden got up, frowning. “That’s okay for now, but they need honey. Sugar doesn’t have any nutrients.”
“I know that.” Her dad bridled. “I’ve been keeping bees for years. My daughter, here, she’s the one who got panicky.”
“Didn’t mean to offend,” Marsden said, “but you’d be surprised how many people feed sugar or corn syrup when the honey’s a little light.
Not faulting you, a lot of commercial beekeepers do it too.
” He cast a glance down the driveway. “I saw your hives on the way in, you’ve got them in a good south-facing spot. ”
“Sited them myself,” her dad said, but Cassie could tell he was still ruffled.
“What kind of bees do you keep?”
“Italians.”
Marsden nodded. “They don’t usually give much trouble.
Should we take a look, see what’s going on?
Then we can figure out where to go from here.
” He had a nice respectful tone with her dad, which would go a long way.
Still, her father had that stubborn look.
This wasn’t his idea, and he was going to fight it.
“Your daughter is welcome to get out of the car,” Cassie said. “It’s cooler on the porch.” The windows were open, but it didn’t seem right to make the girl sit in the car on a warm day.
“Want to get out, Lilah?” Marsden said.
She shrugged. “I’m okay.”
“Why don’t you come down and give us a hand?” His voice was mild, but it wasn’t really a question. The girl sighed extravagantly, and Cassie thought she might be about to argue, but she disengaged from the passenger seat. “Can Charlie get out?”
“No,” Marsden said. “Let him stay in the car.”
“It’s okay if you want to let him out,” Cassie said. “There’s plenty of room for him to run around.”
Marsden shot her an irritated look. “Thank you, but he’s fine. The windows are open.”
Lilah gave her father a sidelong glance. “She said he can get out.” The girl wasn’t letting it go, and Cassie realized she’d unwittingly stirred something up, or maybe it was already stirred and she’d just stepped in it.
“Oh, all right,” Marsden said. “You can let him out. But leave the phone.”
The girl opened the back door and the dog shot out like he’d been imprisoned for a decade. He did a couple of quick circles, then came to sniff at Cassie and her father. After he was satisfied, he gave a wag and ambled off toward the field.
“Keep an eye on him,” Marsden told the girl.
They all trooped through the field down to the hives, following the path her father had worn over the years.
Even in spring, when the grass grew tall, it never entirely disappeared.
Always the whisper of a track from the house to the hives.
And past the hives, an old stone wall that bordered the woods.
The trees were still bare but had started to soften with a hint of green.
Only a matter of days until the woods were lush with leaves.
Cassie kept a wary eye out as they approached the hives.
She’d had a vehement dislike of bees ever since fourth grade when her best friend, Marianne McKenzie, nearly died of a bee sting.
Within minutes of getting stung on the softball field, Marianne had gone clammy and was wheezing for breath, her tongue swollen to twice its normal size.
There were no EpiPens in those days, so the gym teacher bundled her into his car and rushed her to the hospital.
Marianne recovered, but forty years later, the sight of a bee still made Cassie sweat.
“Have you opened them up yet this year?” Marsden asked.
“He tried yesterday,” Cassie said, “but ran into trouble.”
“Didn’t have any trouble,” her father said irritably. “The wind came up, that’s all. Will you let me talk to the man?”
“Sorry.” The rebuke made her feel foolish, but she hated to see her dad flounder, especially in front of a stranger.
She had a hard time knowing when to step in and when to shut up.
One minute he seemed lost and the next he was almost his old overbearing self.
She tried to see it his way. She’d come traipsing in yesterday, and now here was a guy telling him what to do with his bees.
She needed to give him some time to get used to it.
The hives were set on top of platforms her dad had built to keep them off the ground, which made them about chest height.
This time, her dad managed to get the smoker started and after a few good puffs, wriggled the outer lid free on the first hive, releasing a few more bees.
He’d put on his veil up at the house but wasn’t wearing gloves or any other protective gear.
But Cassie wasn’t going to mention that now.
The beekeeper didn’t have on any gear at all, not even a veil, although he’d brought one with him.
With the lid successfully removed, her dad went to lift off the top box but couldn’t get a grip on it.
“Can I give you a hand?” Marsden said.
“I’ve got it.” Cassie’s dad huffed, but the box wasn’t budging.
“Here.” Marsden handed him a flat metal bar with a hooked end. “Try this.”
Her dad inserted the tool between the top box and the one beneath. He wiggled it a little but still couldn’t manage to work the box free. “Got a hundred-fifty pounds of honey out of these hives last year,” he said, stopping to catch his breath.
“Oh yeah? That’s not bad.” Marsden had produced another hive tool and without waiting to be asked, neatly popped the top box, lifted it off and set it on the ground. “What’d you do with it all? Sell any of it?”
“Ate some,” he said, “gave away the rest. I might still have a couple of jars left.”
Cassie had been through the cupboards and hadn’t seen any honey, but she didn’t mention it.
“When I can get her to help, Lilah’s pretty good with extracting,” Marsden said, smiling at the girl, who’d wandered over with Charlie. “Not so good with the cleanup though.”
“What do you mean?” she protested. “I always help clean up.”
He gave her a good-natured look. “That’s debatable.”
He was probably divorced, his weekend to have her.
Cassie had never thought much about the logistics of divorced families, but now she noticed this kind of thing.
Andrew wasn’t a child anymore, but she knew he was hurting, especially with Phil getting remarried.
A woman with young kids, a do-over family.
Andrew had to wonder where that left him.
“Let’s take a look.” Marsden lifted out a frame from the open box and propped it against the hive. Bees crawled all over the top and sides of a thin wax foundation.
Cassie took a step back. Jesus, so many bees. She didn’t think she’d said it aloud, but Marsden turned the frame over, frowning. “Not that many. Should be more.”
Her dad pried free another frame. This too was thick with bees, at least to Cassie’s eye, but Marsden looked displeased. He scraped at a section with his hive tool. “See this?”
Her dad leaned in.
“You’ve got varroa. And if they’re in here, they’re in the other hive too.”
“Varroa?” Her dad stood blinking, the breeze lifting his thin hair.