Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Abilene
Saturday
The morning hum is different today.
It’s the first thing I notice when I step outside with my veil tucked under my arm and my boots still damp from yesterday’s dew.
Usually, my bees greet me with a warm, bustling chorus—a soft, contented buzz like tiny violins tuning up before the show begins. But this morning, the sound has a strange edge to it.
Bees always sense things before people do. Changes in the weather. Air pressure. Storms.
I set the veil and my smoker down on the little bench by the apiary and look up at the sky. Everything is heavy, too heavy for this early in the day.
My grandmother used to say you can taste a bad storm before you can see it, that it leaves a metallic tang on the tongue.
I taste it now.
Warm, unsettled wind brushes the loose hairs around my face, and in the distance, the sky has a bruised look, dark smudges where there should be pale blue.
“Alright, girls,” I murmur, opening the smoker to check the fuel. “Let’s see how you’re doing.”
Yesterday’s pine needles have burned down to ash, so I add a fresh layer of dried ones and a little burlap, strike a match, and coax the flame to life.
When it’s burning hot, I tamp it down and puff gently until the smoke turns cool and white, the way it should be. Calming, not scalding.
I slip the veil over my head, zip it snug against my collar, and tug on my gloves. The moment I crack open the first hive, the truth hits me.
The pitch of the buzz spikes. They’re restless. Wings beating with jittery speed. Crawling over one another in overlapping patterns. Not their usual precise harmony.
“Oh no,” I whisper. “Not today.”
Bees and storms don’t mix. The pressure messes with them. Makes them skittish. Makes them want to abscond if things get too unpredictable.
They don’t like uncertainty any more than I do.
I send two soft puffs of smoke across the entrance, waiting a few beats for them to start fanning and calm a little, then lift the outer cover and inner cover in one smooth motion. No jerky movements. No sudden jostling.
Calm beekeeper, calm bees… usually.
“Easy,” I murmur, sliding one frame out at a time.
I hold the first frame up to the light. The comb is drawn out evenly, capped honey on top, a perfect arch framing the brood pattern below.
My eyes scan automatically: eggs standing upright in the bottoms of cells, tiny crescents of larvae, capped brood. No bullet-shaped drone brood where it shouldn’t be, no spotty pattern to suggest a failing queen.
“Good girl,” I tell her colony.
I look for mites along the thorax and wings, and check the undersides of the frame near the bottom bar. No specks of rust-colored bodies, no deformed wings.
When I tilt the frame, I can see the shimmer of nectar in the open cells. A sign the flow hasn’t dried up entirely, even with the weird heat.
It’s not disease. It’s not pests.
It’s the weather.
I move through the hive systematically, making mental notes the way other people might scribble in a notebook.
Hive Three, brood solid, honey bands stable. Queen active. Temperament elevated, likely barometric pressure.
The queen is moving slower than usual, too. Cautiously, weaving a deliberate path around her attendants, abdomen dipping as she lays.
I follow her with my eyes, tracking her blue dot—last year’s mark—until she disappears under a cluster of workers.
“Can’t say I blame you,” I tell her, as the bees swarm around my hands. “Feels like something’s coming.”
Something big.
I set that frame back carefully, making sure not to crush any workers, gently pressing the shoulders together so there are no awkward gaps.
I adjust the entrance reducer a notch tighter, giving them a smaller doorway to defend if the storm kicks up debris or if other colonies decide to rob while things are mental.
At the next hive, I repeat the process: smoke, wait, open, assess. This colony is stronger, heavier with honey when I tilt the box to check the weight. I drill down into the brood nest, looking for irregularities.
Same story—healthy brood, good stores, aggravated mood.
“Alright,” I say, mostly to reassure myself. “You’re okay. You’re just cranky about the sky.”
My grandmother always said bees are better forecasters than the weather channel. As a kid, I thought she was joking. But I learned pretty quickly that when the hum shifts like this, you listen.
Ever since I was little, even before I had my own hives, I could feel when the valley was about to shift. My grandmother said I was tuned in to the land, that it was the Kentwood in me.
She used to whisper, “We’re built from prairie wind and honeycomb, Abilene. We feel the world differently. And sometimes, it feels us back.”
Right now, the world is pressing its palm against my sternum, whispering that things are about to change.
I make one last pass along the apiary, squinting at the landing boards. Foragers are coming and going in fits instead of steady streams.
Some pace at the entrance, fanning their wings. A couple of guard bees ping against my veil, more defensive than usual but not outright attacking.
“Yeah, I know,” I murmur. “I don’t like today either.”
I slide the screened bottom board out from under one hive, checking the debris. Bits of wax, a few varroa mites, but well within the range I’ve been monitoring. I tap the board, make a mental reminder to do a sugar roll test in a few days if the weather settles down.
I finish checking the hives and close them carefully, putting the covers back the way I found them, brick on top turned lengthwise instead of crosswise to remind myself I’ve already inspected this yard today.
By the time I’m done, sweat is trickling down my spine even though the sun isn’t fully overhead yet. The storm isn’t here, but it’s circling somewhere, pacing like a restless animal.
I set my smoker in the metal bucket I keep nearby, closing the lid to let it suffocate slowly. Safety first. The last thing this valley needs is a stray ember.
I take one last look at the hives, whisper a promise to keep them safe, then turn toward the house.
The screen door creaks the way it always does, the sound almost comforting in its familiarity. This house has been creaking my whole life, every floorboard, every hinge, every step up to the attic.
My father always promised he’d fix the little things, but he never did. And after my mother died, he seemed to stop noticing the house altogether.
The old farmhouse smells faintly of beeswax and citrus cleaner because I scrubbed the counters before dawn, the way I do when my nerves get too loud. Cleaning gives my hands something to do when my thoughts are too crowded.
I hang my veil by the door and head toward the living room.
The family portrait hangs on the far wall in its crooked wooden frame, always tilting just slightly to the left, no matter how many times I straighten it. I step toward it without thinking, drawn like a moth to something that hurts and heals at the same time.
It’s a photograph from before everything went sideways.
Mom is sitting on a hay bale, smiling in that soft, quiet way she had, sunlight filtered through lace curtains. Her hair is pinned back with one of those tortoiseshell clips she used to collect, and she’s wearing her favorite yellow sundress.
Dad stands behind her with a hand on her shoulder. He looks younger in the photo than I remember him, less tired, less worn down by disappointment and grief. His smile back then was real. Warm. Full of pride.
And there I am, all freckles and braids, sitting on the ground in front of them holding a jar of honey as if I’ve just discovered gold.
My chest tightens. I reach out and touch the frame, my thumb brushing over my mother’s face. The wood is cool against my skin.
Twelve years old, that’s how old I was when everything shattered.
Twelve when the fire took her. Twelve when my father, already fragile, cracked down the middle with grief and drifted away piece by piece until there was nothing left of the man in the photo.
Twelve when I had to grow up all at once.
After Mom died, I expected my father and I would cling to each other like two broken halves of the same whole. But instead, he left.
Not physically at first. At first, it was just his eyes going distant. His words fewer and fewer. His presence there but not there.
Until one day, he left outright. Packed a bag and told me he couldn’t breathe here anymore. Told me the house felt like a grave.
He didn’t ask me to go with him.
Didn’t hug me goodbye.
Just left me with a grandmother who tried her best to fill the hole my parents left behind.
Grandma Mabel was different from my mother. Sharper. Tougher. Built from the same iron that held this valley together. She carried secrets in her chest like bees carry nectar.
But she loved me.
In her own way.
Enough to teach me everything she knew. Enough to make sure I could survive on my own.
When she died, she left me the house, the hives, and a lifetime of questions.
I blink, realizing my throat is tight.
“I miss you,” I whisper to the frame. “All of you. Sometimes, even now, I don’t know what to do without you all. Completely alone in the world…”