He flexes his fingers. “I feel like a very nervous astronaut.”
“You’ll be fine,” I assure him. “They respond to how we move. Calm, cool, confident.”
“Internally, I’m none of those things,” he says. “But I’ll fake it.”
“That works too.”
I pull on my own veil and gloves, moving on autopilot: smoker, hive tool, ratchet straps, duct tape, foam plugs for the entrances.
Jesse eyes the equipment warily from a safe distance.
“Just to confirm,” he says, “how many bees are in one of those boxes again?”
“Anywhere from twenty to sixty thousand,” I say, checking the smoker fuel. “Depending on the time of year.”
He blanches. “Per box?”
“Per box.”
“I’m gonna stay over here,” he says.
“Daddy, can we have bee suits?” Eliza asks.
“No,” three adults say at the same time.
She pouts. “We never get to do anything fun.”
“You named a honey today,” I remind her. “That’s very advanced beekeeper work.”
Her face brightens. “That was fun.”
Caleb nods. “We helped.”
“You did,” I say, pride tugging at my chest. “My best apprentices.”
While Jesse herds them to the fence line to watch, I turn my attention back to the hives.
“All right, girls,” I murmur, opening the smoker and lighting the fuel. “We’re going for a ride.”
I add dried pine needles and a bit of burlap, coaxing the flame down into a cool smoke. Never hot.
Hot smoke makes them angry. Cool smoke just makes them think there’s a forest fire, and they’d better eat fast.
“How does that help?” Wyatt asks, watching.
“It distracts them,” I explain. “They gorge on honey to ‘prepare’ to evacuate, and full bees are calmer bees. Also, smoke masks alarm pheromones. If a few get upset, the whole hive doesn’t cascade.”
“That’s… actually fascinating,” he says.
I puff a few small clouds of smoke at the entrance of the first hive, wait a beat, then gently wedge in my hive tool to pop the lid. The hum inside rises, then evens out as they sense me and the familiar rhythm of inspection.
“They know you,” Wyatt says quietly.
“They know my scent,” I say. “My footsteps. The way I handle the frames. Bees notice everything.”
I work fast but careful: strap around the stacked boxes to keep them together, foam at the entrance to keep most of the bees inside, tape at the seams to prevent gaps.
“Won’t they… suffocate?” Wyatt asks.
