“You’re really introducing me to the bees?”
“Of course. You don’t walk into someone’s home unannounced, do you?”
Joe lifted his camera instinctively. Her curls were pulled up in a knot, a few honey-colored tendrils brushing her neck. She wore jean shorts and a soft linen shirt knotted at her waist. There was something about the way she moved—confident, unhurried—that felt utterly magnetic.
Krista picked up the small smoker from a wooden crate and squeezed the bellows, releasing a puff of pale smoke that curled in the warm air. “This just helps calm them down. Masks their warning pheromones so no one panics.”
“Good to know,” Joe said, stepping closer despite the instinct screaming to stay back.
“Here.” She handed him the smoker. “Give them a few puffs near the entrance. Slow,steady.”
He crouched beside her. The hum of the bees vibrated through the air, close enough to feel it in his chest. The scent of smoke mingled with the sweetness of honey and warm wood.
When she lifted the lid with a hive tool, sunlight spilled over the golden combs. The bees shimmered like living jewels, crawling across the surface of the honeycomb in a slow, synchronized movement. Joe stood frozen at the sight. “Beautiful.”
Krista smiled. “Right?”
One bee drifted lazily upward and landed just above her collarbone, its tiny legs glinting in the light. Krista didn’t flinch. “Hey there,” she murmured.
He froze. “Uh— Krista?—”
“It’s fine,” she said, still calm. “They can feel fear. If you panic, they panic.”
“Right. No panic.” He swallowed and his hand hovered instinctively before he could stop himself, fingers brushing the air just above her skin. “Want me to?—”
Krista’s gaze flicked to him, eyes warm and steady. “She’ll move when she’s ready.”
The bee crawled a few inches, then lifted off and disappeared into the sunlight. Joe let out a breath.
“See?” Krista smiled, lowering the frame.
She set the hive lid aside and reached for one of the wooden frames, her movements fluid and confident. She slid it free with a soft scrape, the sunlight catching on the amber honey sealed behind pale wax. Bees still crawled along the edges, eager to stick around and sample their hard work.
“Look at that,” she said, holding it up so the light shone through like stained glass. “This one’s ready to harvest. See how the cells are capped? That means it’s sealed and cured.”
Joe leaned closer as the sweet scent of honey filled the air. “How often do you do this?”
“Depends on the bloom. Right now, they’re pulling mostly from clover and wild rose.” She brushed her thumb lightly alongthe frame. “We’ll take just one. Always leave plenty behind. Balance, you know?”
He nodded, though he was mostly focused on the way sunlight pooled along her skin, the way her voice softened when she spoke to the bees. “You make it sound almost spiritual.”
“It is,” Krista said quietly. “They give so much. We respect each other. They’re part of our family. We have this tradition where we visit the bees to tell them about big life events, like when someone dies, or gets married, or a new baby is born. It’s an old superstition my great-grandmother Isabel brought in.”
“The one from the photo.”
“Yes, she’s the one who started the family tradition of keeping bees.”
Krista stepped over to a small workbench set up under the trees. There was an old metal knife resting in a bowl of warm water, a honey strainer, and a row of glass jars waiting to be filled. With careful hands, she scraped away the wax cap from a small corner of the frame. Thick honey oozed out, glistening in the light.
She dipped a wooden spoon into the dripping honey and turned toward him. “Here. Try it.”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then leaned in. The honey touched his tongue, warm and impossibly sweet, tasting of flowers and smoke and sunlight. “That’s unreal.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. The air between them felt charged again, like the space just before a summer storm. A bee drifted between them, and the spell broke.
Joe’s cell phone rang then. He looked down at the call. It was Marcus, his friend and editor, no doubt wanting an update and plan for his next article.
“I’m going to step away; I need to take this,” Joe said, backing away slowly so as not to agitate the bees.
