Bee Keeper

The bees were gone. The last of their fuzzy bodies and lace wings would be encased in glass and hung in museums as morbidly sardonic reminders. They would be pretty things of the past—distant memories of a world with a now foreseeable death date. But for now, they were trapped in a different sort of glass as their extinction was broadcasted to every screen and channel. The bees were gone, and the world was holding its breath.

Clarice Hood sat numbly in her living room. She watched images of the insects cycle through as if the news alone could pay the world’s respects, or perhaps make up for the lack thereof. Flashes of yellow and brown balanced delicately on flowers still possessed with the sun’s dutiful shine. She watched clips of them gather in hexagonal honeycombs, deftly transporting pollen to young nursing bees. Alone in her house, Clarice was filled with a crushing sadness. She found her fingers reaching for the TV screen as if she could stroke those stripes one last time. The news anchor rattled on, his voice riddled with a wobbly panic. Clarice muted him and moved from the couch to the window, sidestepping cardboard boxes full of her most precious items. She stood rigidly against the pane and waited for the feeling to find its way back into her toes. 

A few weeks into spring, only a handful of plants had begun to recover from the nightly frosts. They shivered cautiously in the late-afternoon light and wilted under the weight of fresh snowmelt. A light breeze fluttered through the backyard, and in the distance, a flock of swallows departed from their guard on a telephone wire. 

Their naiveté was enviable. Clarice took a greedy, steadying breath to prevent her rage from consuming her. She pressed her nose against the glass and relished the coolness of it on her skin. Her gaze fell on the twin set of beehives positioned in the garden. They were empty, of course—had been for nearly a year. By now, their insides probably resembled a ghost town: only dust and paper-thin walls and a persisting silence. 

A loud knock on the door startled Clarice, and she jerked away from the window. Another knock and the chime of a bell announced the arrival of a very urgent visitor. Clarice sighed and trundled to the door. She cracked it, scanned her porch, and laid eyes on her neighbor, Jovanny Tate.

Jovanny pushed the door open and entered Clarice’s modest foyer. “Clarice!” she cried. “Oh, thank heavens you’re home! It’s a nightmare out there! You wouldn’t believe it!” She set down several plastic bags of groceries and brushed silver-blonde hair out of her face. In a gray sweatsuit, the woman looked exceedingly older than she actually was. 

“Oh, I think I would,” Clarice said. She collected the bags and hoisted them onto the counter. Apples, jars of honey, onions, avocados, and boxes of berries tumbled out. Clarice’s stomach somersaulted. “I see you went to the store.”

“Of course I did! I’m surprised you didn’t! Everything’s almost wiped out. They had to call in the police to keep people from killing each other! Can you imagine? Everyone’s going crazy. Don’t worry though, I got out just in time. Here, this bag is for you.”

Clarice tried to be touched by the gesture as her hysterical neighbor pushed a sack towards her, but failed. “No, no, Jovanny. I’m fine. Thank you though,” she said. The shelves of supermarkets had been spotty for a while now, but news of the bees’ definite demise had clearly pushed shoppers over the edge. Clarice turned her attention to the TV where reporters were now covering riots at local grocery stores. 

“Suit yourself,” Jovanny said. Her frizzy locks had been swept up into a messy low bun that did little to complement her chubby face. She adjusted the chunky glasses on her nose and peered at Clarice through drowsy, thickly made-up hazel eyes. A bona fide snake-skin purse swung on her arm, making a stack of bangle bracelets tinkle and ping. “What do you think about all of this?” Jovanny asked.

Clarice considered. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “We’ve been having an issue with the bee population for years. It was only a matter of time before…”

“Before they all died?” 

Clarice gritted her teeth and nodded. “It’s just hard to wrap my head around it all, you know? We should have done more to save them.”

Jovanny was oddly quiet. Clarice took the opportunity to pull out a slice of bread and lather it with almond butter and honey. Jovanny watched her with feigned indifference. Clarice took a bite and marveled at the exquisite taste of liquid gold. 

“I’m afraid to eat,” Jovanny blurted. “Won’t it all be gone? I mean, that’s why I had to stock up!” 

Clarice almost felt sympathy for her sweet-toothed neighbor whose habitual gorging of twinkies and Toblerone bars had rendered her plump and sluggish. Almost. As Jovanny continued to rant about the food supply, Clarice was disgusted. “Jovanny, do you really need that many bottles of sunflower oil?” she asked.

“Better to be safe than sorry! You can have one if you want. I’m just trying to be prepared.”

Clarice shook her head. “Keep it. I have enough.”

Jovanny shrugged. She pointed towards the backyard. “What about your beehives?”

“What about them?”

“I don’t know, are there any bees left? Anything at all?”

Clarice bit back a snarky response. Her neighbor had benefited from the treasures those hives had produced, and yet she had had no desire to help. Her ignorance was astounding. Clarice thought of her other neighbor, Leroy, and his big-bellied laughs at any talk of her bees. “I’m tellin’ ya, you’re wastin’ your time! You'd hafta be insane to wanna do somethin’ like that!” After the man had left with three jars of honey, Clarice had found two smashed bee corpses on the patio where Leroy’s clompy rubber work boots had squashed their fragile lives.

Later, when Clarice, clad in a heavy bee suit, brought up adding more hives to her garden, her adjacent neighbors had been quick to protest. “We don’t want no stingers in our backyards!” Leroy had declared. “Guess what’ll happen? There’ll be swarms of ‘em everywhere, attackin’ us all!” Before Clarice could inform the man that his apocalyptic prediction was immensely flawed, he had excused himself to catch the ball game. 

So Clarice had relented and deemed herself lucky to have even two. In retrospect, their concerns had been a good thing; Clarice had learned that people hated the things they feared, and it had allowed her to do some serious planning.

Clarice faced Jovanny and polished off her snack. “No, there’s nothing. They’re extinct. Gone.”

“Wow. I just...I...I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Neither does anyone else.” The light outside was dimming and the temperature was dropping. Clarice stared uneasily at the clock.

A conspiratorial edge had slithered its way into Jovanny’s voice as she spoke again. “You know,” she said, “Leroy told me it’s a hoax. He says the government removed all the bees on purpose.” 

“And why would they do that?” Clarice asked. Her patience was fraying. She liked Jovanny Tate well enough; they often spoke over the fence and shared eggs or sugar when it was needed. But the intimacy of their relationship stopped there, and Clarice felt unsettled with the woman standing in her kitchen. 

“Beats me. I suppose they have their reasons. I just can’t believe they’d do something so cruel to innocent people like me!” Jovanny fiddled with her large hoop earrings. Her chapped lips were twisted into a miffed purse.

“Jovanny, please. You can’t possibly think the government is behind something like this. And none of us are innocent. We caused the bees’ extinction. We have no one to blame but ourselves,” Clarice said, bubbles of fury coursing through her bloodstream.

Jovanny scoffed. “Yeah, right. You spend too much time in your garden, Clarice.”

Clarice shook her head and gnawed on her cheek. “By the way, I won’t be here for a few weeks,” she said. “I’m going to visit my sister. I leave tonight.”

“I thought you told me you didn’t have any siblings! Well, alright then, I won’t come knocking.” Jovanny began to collect her coveted groceries. “Thanks for the chat.”

“Anytime,” Clarice said. She walked the woman to the door. “Oh, and Jovanny? Do me a favor and don’t believe what Leroy says,” she pleaded. She didn’t like to beg, not anymore, but she knew she would regret it if she didn’t try to ward her neighbor from Leroy’s ludicrous theories. 

Unsurprisingly, her last-ditch attempt was fruitless, for Jovanny batted her hand and said, “See you in a few weeks.”

As soon as Clarice was sure Jovanny was in her house, she got to work. Whirling around her kitchen, she nabbed anything edible, packing the fruits in crates and the canned items in canvas totes. As her neighborhood was cloaked in darkness, Clarice took a flashlight to the backyard where she unassembled the beehives and stacked the planks on a dolly that she wheeled to her ‘69 Ford pickup truck. Boxes of clothes and tools and food followed, and a few trivial trinkets that Clarice had decided she couldn’t do without rounded off her pack-up. 

With the moon slowly rising, bathing the grass in a rich ivory glow, Clarice locked up her house and bid her neighbors a farewell. As she peeled out of the driveway, a single fact played in her head: The colony collapses without their queen.

By midnight, Clarice had arrived at a lonesome ranch that was nearly swallowed up by prairie grasses and tumbleweeds. She parked inside a rotting barn and was instantly charged with a deep sense of calm. Jumping from the truck and into the muddied hay, she jogged to a small trail that curved around another dilapidated structure and dipped into a small valley. In front of her stood a massive greenhouse extending the length of a flat meadow. Down in the valley, it was almost invisible, but the greenery within was immediately eye-catching. 

With great care, Clarice unbolted the door and stepped inside. The scene in front of her was surreal: moonbeams illuminated rows of fresh tomatoes and basil and green beans bursting with life. It was a lush oasis in a desert of cracked earth and brown vegetation. Clarice inhaled the intoxicating scent of wet dirt and humid air, then made her way down the rows of plants. 

With crazed desperation, she passed earthy beds and zealous vines, hoping her secret was still safe—and alive. The world may have been doomed, but here in her greenhouse, Clarice felt elated. She felt godly, and not for the first time, she thought about what it would be like to leave her small house on her small block with her small-minded neighbors forever.

Towards the back of the greenhouse, a circle of beehives released sweet smells of summer. Clarice leaned down next to one and grinned. They were buzzing.