She met Mrs. Flood back behind the print-works, where the morning sun sparkled on the waves in the river. Every step across the turf felt like a new one, with no long panels of fabric swirling around her as she moved.
“I haven’t worn trousers since I was a girl,” she explained, swinging one leg back and forth experimentally. “Sebastian—my brother—used to lend me an old pair of his so we could sneak out into the city at night.”
Mrs. Flood chuckled. She was leaning against the brick wall, one leg bent, the smoker dangling from her hand as she idly pumped to keep it lit and puffing proudly. “Hopefully this afternoon’s work will involve a trifle less mischief.”
“Only larceny,” Agatha replied. “As promised.”
Mrs. Flood laughed again, the sound finding a thrumming echo somewhere deep in Agatha’s belly. “Let’s begin.”
Mrs. Flood was already wearing her gloves and a hat with a veil; she instructed Agatha how to tuck the fine muslin tight—but not too tight!—at the neck, and began pumping the bellows of the smoker more frequently while Agatha pulled on a pair of thick gloves. The muslin veiling her face was very fine, and only seemed to cast a light morning mist over the scene before Agatha’s eyes.
“First thing to do when harvesting,” said Mrs. Flood, “is to smoke the bees. It takes a few minutes to have an effect.” She placed the spout of the smoker near the hive entrance and puffed out long jets of white smoke.
Scents of grass and herbs rose up, tickling the back of Agatha’s throat almost enough to make her cough. Already the few bees she saw were moving lazily, staying close to the hive entrance and disappearing into the straw coils of the skep.
Mrs. Flood placed a hand on top of the skep’s upper portion. “You saw the basic skep hive before; once the bees had taken to their new home I made some modifications so the honey is easier to get to.” She lifted the top bell of the skep and the segment came away.
Agatha gaped behind her veil. Now sitting on the top of the hive was a glass jar, about the same size and shape as a gas lamp’s globe. Honeycomb coiled inside it and pressed up against the walls, a golden, living labyrinth spotted with laboring bees. Beneath the jar, a flat wooden circle with a hole cut in allowed bees to scurry up and down between the main hive body and the jar.
Enchanted, Agatha moved closer. The glass was, as Mrs. Flood had promised, almost entirely full—she could see the capped honeycomb chambers where the sweetness was safely stored.
“It’s a good sign, this much honey so early in the season.”
Agatha swallowed a gasp of surprise. Mrs. Flood was at her elbow, her veiled head inclining toward the bees as fondly as a mother watching over her children.
Sunlight caught the muslin of her veil and made it glow like a saint’s halo.
Agatha had to force her gaze away, or else she’d never stop staring. She turned back to the honeycomb, and the bees who even now worked to cram more wax and sweetness into every nook and cranny.
“I’ve seen such jars for sale in the market, every summer and fall. I thought they’d been filled by people—I didn’t know the bees did all this,” Agatha replied, her tone hushed. She felt... reverent, admiring, in a way she hadn’t on that first day. These weren’t invaders any longer: they wereherbees. Tenants, Mrs. Flood had said, and now Agatha could see exactly what she meant.
Mrs. Flood’s breath rippled the muslin as she explained. “They’re not quite as common as plain skeps, but they’ve got two great advantages: first, they let a beekeeper actually observe the bees at work, which is the best way to learn about them; and second, they let you take honey without having to slaughter the entire hive.”
“Theentire...” Agatha blew out a breath, and tried again, more calmly. “Is that done often when stealing honey?”
Mrs. Flood’s hat and veil bobbed once, sharply. “Very. Traditionally you hold the skep over burning sulfur until all the bees drop off. You get more honey that way, since you don’t have to leave any for the bees to live on during the winter—but it’s wasteful. More than wasteful: it’s cruel. And I’m far from the only beekeeper who thinks so.”
“Then why do it?”
Mrs. Flood puffed a little more smoke over the hive before she answered. “Tradition. Change is difficult, and beekeeping is ancient. And a lot of cottage beekeepers can’t afford the glass for this method—not when the straw skeps are so much cheaper. It does take a little more specialized knowledge to get the bees to fill the jars properly. The sides need to be rubbed with wax first on the inside, for instance. Otherwise the bees will just slip off and never leave anything there for you to harvest. There are a few other hive designs trying to solve the problem, but most of them are available only to the scientific classes: your gentlemen beekeepers and lady gardeners and such. Mr. Koskinen has quite a fine one; perhaps he’ll let me show you someday. Still, every year people bring out more new designs—because many other beekeepers and scientists hate seeing the same awful cycle over and over again, every year. Capturing wild swarms in the spring, only to kill them all in the autumn. Never letting a colony grow or thrive from year to year, or trying to learn how it is they make honey, or uncovering the secrets and mysteries of the hive.”
Agatha blinked. “Mrs. Flood, that was almost... poetic.”
Mrs. Flood laughed, though there was a bitter note in it this time. “I know by now that isn’t a compliment, coming from you.”
“It ought to be.”
Mrs. Flood’s head snapped up, and toward Agatha. The veil seemed suddenly more opaque than before.
Agatha felt her face flush, and hoped it wasn’t obvious beneath the muslin. “Maybe I simply don’t have the necessary capacity for poetry, to understand its true merits.”
“Maybe you simply haven’t encountered the right poem,” Mrs. Flood countered. She angled her face to peer down into the hive entrance, blowing lightly on the few bees still buzzing there, then straightened.
A knife appeared in her hand, long and sharp; she offered it to Agatha handle-first. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Agatha grasped the knife, made sure it was steady in her gloved hand, and took a deep breath. Under Mrs. Flood’s direction, she placed one hand on the top of the jar to steady it, and slid the knife blade between the lip of the jar and the wooden board beneath. It cut cleanly through the base of the honeycomb, and Agatha tipped the jar up and stepped back.
Mrs. Flood was ready with a new vessel to place atop the hive, then showed Agatha how to blow away the few bees remaining in the jar in her hands. They spun irritatedly into the air and made brief, angry orbits around Agatha’s head before returning to the security of the hive.
