Chapter 8
“I was crying because it hurt so bad, and everybody was standing around me in a circle.”
“Oof, I bet everyone watching didn’t help.”
“My dad was the worst. He started patting down my whole body looking for where I was hurt. It was so embarrassing.”
Penny’s laughter lifted to where Zander stood listening on the stairs. He’d been there for too long, listening to Winter regale Penny with the story of his first bee sting.
She had a beautiful laugh—light and airy, like the sway of the long grass outside. He’d heard snippets of it at the farmer’s market as she talked with customers, but never as free and full-throated as this. He leaned against the railing, waiting to hear it again.
“Da-ad!”
Instead, his son’s impatient holler broke him from his stupor.
Wait, why exactly was he lurking on the stairs waiting to hear Penny Becker laugh?
“Come on!”
“Chill, little man! Coming.”
The stairs deposited Zander in the small sitting room, where an old paisley couch sat as the only survivor of Zander’s morning purge. Penny perched on its edge in a full bee suit with her hood on her lap, Winter was already decked out to match Penny, and a third suit was draped over the armrest.
Penny looked his way, her blue eyes too bright for the drab room, making Zander aware of his messy wet hair and the tug of his shirt across his shoulders.
When had this shirt gotten so tight? And why was the room so hot?
And why, for the love of all things holy, did Zander like the sight of perfect Penny Becker sitting on that ugly couch?
He cleared his throat and shot a look at Winter. “For the record, I had a perfectly normal reaction to my kid yelling, and I quote, ‘I’m dying! I’m dying! Oh my god, I’m dying!’ ”
Winter rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on his face, a lot like the one he’d flashed when Zander had shared the news about securing plans with Penny, finally.
When he hadn’t heard from her after the market, Zander assumed Penny wouldn’t actually follow up.
Mallory offered to use the Sullivan’s Glen grapevine to get her number, and if all else failed, the Becker Farms website had a contact page.
But Zander wasn’t about to chase Penny down again, especially after giving up a whole morning at her market table without even a thank-you.
Then by some miracle she’d actually reached out, and now she was in his papou’s house, brighter than the place deserved.
“When Winter had that sting,” Penny asked him, “he didn’t have a reaction, right? No trouble breathing or anything?”
“No, nothing like that. Why? Do you think he’s at risk out there?”
“I don’t see any reason to think so,” Penny said evenly, maybe seeing the worst-case scenarios playing out in Zander’s head.
“He didn’t have an allergic reaction in the past, and we’ve got the suits on.
I checked them all before I came over and they’re in good shape.
And I always have an EpiPen with me, just in case.
” She stood and passed the third suit to him. “What about you?”
Zander stepped awkwardly into the suit, which reminded him of the janitorial job he’d had when Mallory was pregnant. He slipped his arms through and looked back to Penny. “What about me?”
“Any recent bee stings?”
As he tugged at the zipper the suit got tighter, particularly across his chest. “Don’t worry about me.”
Penny scoffed quietly. “This isn’t the time to get macho.”
He peered down at her. “I’m not being macho. I’m asking you to concentrate on my kid.”
Penny’s jaw tensed as she glanced toward Winter and glued a clearly fake-as-hell smile to her face. “Anyone who goes out there with me is under my supervision and care. Even you, Zander. If you can’t accept that, you can stay here.”
His fingers fumbled with the zipper. Everything about him felt too big in this thing. “No way. If Winter is going out there to what could turn into the beepocalypse for all I know, I’m coming, too.”
Penny’s lips quirked like her fake smile might turn into a real one. “Fine. So, bee stings?”
“I’m not sure when it was exactly,” he grumbled. “Within the last few years. There was a bee on my kitchen sponge, no serious reaction.”
“Was that so hard?” Penny tilted her head, and Zander swallowed back a retort. “Now let’s head out.”
Out in the sunshine, Penny walked in a circle around each of them, making sure each part of the bulky suit was all zipped up, then took them through putting on the hoods and gloves.
She directed all her instructions at Winter as Zander followed along, and soon they were walking through the trees, following the same path Zander had trod down that morning only a few days ago.
Feeling curious the night before, Zander had looked up Becker Farms online. Most of the property was dedicated to apple orchards, and the website mentioned U-pick days, produce sales, and honey, along with bee removal and pollination services.
It also featured an unfairly adorable picture of Penny Becker at six years old with a giant beekeeping veil draped over her tiny blond head.
The trees opened into the clearing, and Zander was back among Penny’s bees. He knew from his research that each box constituted its own bee colony, and each colony could have tens of thousands of bees. So right now, his kid was surrounded by at least a hundred thousand bees.
Cool, cool, cool.
With quick and easy movements, Penny picked up a silver smoker from the ground, another item he recognized from his Google crash course. She pulled a lighter from her bulky pocket and lit the brush in the smoker, then blew on the contents until they smoldered.
“This makes everything a little easier,” she told Winter.
“Bees do almost all their communicating through smell, so the smoke blocks them from raising too much alarm when a giant monster starts messing around with their home. It also tricks them a little into thinking there might be a forest fire coming, and they get busy gathering up honey just in case.”
“We’re scaring them?” Winter’s voice cracked.
Winter had loved animals since the day he could point his chubby baby hands at his board books.
He was the kid collecting ants and saving baby birds, doing every school report about an endangered animal somewhere across the globe.
The glimpse of that kid still in there hit Zander with a swell of parenting warm fuzzies.
“Think about it like this.” Penny lifted the flat wooden top from a hive and worked the smoker, sending a small poof into the box from above.
“Bees always want something to do. When I smoke them a little, they’re going to keep themselves busy gathering up honey in case they have to relocate.
But a few minutes later they’ll put it all back and move on.
We aren’t harming them, just keeping them busy while we poke around. ”
“How do they gather it?” Winter asked.
“They actually have special pouches inside their bodies.” Penny spoke as she reached into the hive, all her movements calm and practiced, like she’d done this a million times. Considering that picture of little Penny, she probably had.
“That’s also how they collect nectar or water and bring it back to the hive,” she continued. “So right now they’ll use them to store some honey until they’re sure it’s safe to put it back in.”
“All right,” Winter replied cautiously. “As long as they’re okay.”
Penny lifted her arms, pulling out a wooden frame about ten inches by seven inches, maybe two inches thick, and completely covered with a carpet of bees.
“Whoa,” Winter exhaled. “Awesome.”
Winter stepped forward to look, and Zander leaned over his son to see for himself, as much of his tension about the bees melted away.
Penny clearly knew what she was doing, and as much as they’d butted heads, she wouldn’t put Zander’s kid in danger.
Somehow he just knew that she took care of the things around her.
“This is a frame, and I have eight of these in each box,” Penny said.
“There’s a lot happening in a hive at any given minute, but we’re going to simplify it into a few basics.
When you’re inspecting a colony, like we’re doing right now, you’re paying attention to three main things.
” She lowered the frame and turned it so one side was facing up.
“You want to see honey, you want to see pollen, and you want to see brood.”
“Brood?” Winter curled over the frame. “What’s that?”
“That’s where the baby bees come from.”
“No way! Where?”
Penny flipped the frame over, revealing another side of bees and honeycomb, where more bees teemed along the surface. “Look up at the top right corner. See where it’s a little darker?”
Zander squinted at a section of cells covered by a layer of dark copper wax.
“Inside there,” Penny said, “are baby bees, transforming from larva.”
“They make a cocoon, right? Like butterflies?” Winter asked.
“They do!” Penny’s smile was clear through her netted hood. “Nobody warned me you were already an insect expert.”
And shit, now his kid was beaming, and Zander was smiling, too.
She was great at this. Clearly an expert at what she was doing, and a gifted teacher on top of it. As Penny rested the frame on the hive, beckoning Winter closer, Zander suspected the family farm rested largely on Penny’s obviously competent shoulders, and she was probably damn good at managing it.
And worse, he was having trouble holding it against her.
“These cells look empty,” Penny continued. “But if you look closely, you’ll see something inside about the size of a grain of rice. That’s an egg. Once it hatches, it’s a slimy white larva, like… this.”
Winter gasped as Penny located a cell holding a white, slimy larva. “That is so gross.”
Which, in Winter-speak, meant it was the coolest thing ever.
“When it’s time for to the larva to pupate, the cell will be capped like those ones up there. Through all the stages, other bees are taking care of the brood. They’re cleaning everything up and feeding everyone.”