1st 5 Pages November Workshop- Krumwiede

Name: Lana Krumwiede

Genre: Middle-grade Fantasy

Title: Diluvians

Beatrice was exactly where she wanted to be on a white-hot July afternoon—wearing a long-sleeved, long-pants, zip-up suit; thick gloves; some serious boots; and a wide-brimmed hat with a veil that hung down to her chest. Kid-sized, of course. 

She was about to start her first beekeeping lesson from Mr. Andelin, her neighbor. He wore the same protective gear. Adult size, of course. 

Mr. Andelin stood next to the stack of white boxes, about to open the lid. Not boxes, Beatrice reminded herself, supers. That was the correct name for them. When it came to science, correct vocabulary was important.

A low, constant hum came from the hive. Already there were quite a few bees zipping around. When a bee flew by, a soft buzz would get louder and then fade away, like a tiny jet zooming past. A bee landed in front of her face on the other side of the mesh that hung down from her hat. She had to almost cross her eyes to look at it. “Hey there, little guy.”

Mr. Andelin looked up at her. “You mean girl.” 

That’s right. Beatrice had forgotten that worker bees were girls. "I love that girl bees are the ones with the stingers." 

“Yup,” said Mr. Andelin. 

In the insect world, the females are the workers, the queens, the warriors, the hunters. They were usually more fierce than the males. While Beatrice liked the idea of fierce females, she didn’t want to get stung by one. Good thing she had the veil. She took a step back, but the bee hung on. Its tiny legs moved up and down, rotating its body from side to side. Beatrice blinked and focused on Mr. Andelin instead.

“Is the buzzing getting louder?” Beatrice asked. “Or is that my imagination?” 

“The bees are a little uneasy because of the veils,” he said. “They’ve never seen me wear one before. We’ll have to move slow and quiet to keep them calm.”

Yes, please. Beatrice definitely wanted the bees to stay calm. In all the videos she’d watched, the beekeepers always wore veils and calmed the bees with smoke. But Mr. Andelin did neither of those things in all the times Beatrice had seen him working at his beehive. 

The only reason he wore the suit and veil today was because Mom had insisted. It had taken a lot of convincing to get Mom to agree to this, and full protection for both of them was one of her conditions. 

“Why don’t you like to wear the veil?” she asked.

Mr. Andelin gave a tiny shrug and answered quietly. “I have an understanding with the bees. I make sure they have what they need, and they share their honey with me. It’s all very friendly.”

Hmm. That sounded very non-scientific. It was true that bees were very intelligent. Some scientists had even trained bees to search out land mines in military zones. But they couldn’t have friendly feelings toward people, could they? “How can you have an understanding with bees?”

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I trust them, and they trust me—that’s what friends do. How would you feel if every time I came to visit you, I wore a bullet-proof vest and a helmet?” 

“I don’t think that’s the same thing.” Trust sounded fine, but it didn’t seem like the best idea with bees. If Beatrice was ever lucky enough to have her own beehive, she would always wear a veil and use smoke.

As Mr. Andelin pried open the hive’s lid, Beatrice noticed something she hadn’t expected: She was nervous. 

Even after dozens of online beekeeping videos she’d watched. Even after the stacks of library books she’d read. Even after she’d written four and a half science essays on the benefits of beekeeping for kids, which was mainly to convince Mom who wasn’t crazy about the idea. Even after all that, Beatrice still had a twisty-gut anxious feeling now that she was actually here.

She’d never been queasy about insects before. Mom was the one who was scared of bugs, not Beatrice. Whenever a bug showed up in the house, Mom refused to get near it, dead or alive. Beatrice would scoop the bug into a cup, cover it with a card, and release it outside. The bug was probably just lost, and nobody deserved to be executed for being lost. 

But with all the bees around, this was different. A colony this size had about fifty-thousand bees, and if they got angry or aggressive, they would defend the hive with their lives. 

Twisty-gut feeling and all, Beatrice was dying to get a good look inside of the beehive. At least, the scientist part of her wanted to.  The scaredy-cat part of her wanted to go home and read about it. The scientist won out.

Mr. Andelin had the lid off now, and Beatrice forced herself to lean forward for a good look. There wasn’t much to see yet, just a row of wooden honeycomb frames, like skinny rectangular picture frames standing up inside a box, only these frames had a wall of honeycomb where each picture would be. Ten of them, all fitted vertically in their slots inside the super. She counted a total of seven bees crawling around on the edges. Oh, now eight.

Mr. Andelin stood very still and didn’t talk for a bit. 

Beatrice did the same. This was one of the things she liked about him. She could ask him as many questions as she wanted, or spout as many science facts as she liked, and it didn’t annoy him. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. And when she helped him water his flower garden or refill the butterfly feeders, sometimes they didn’t talk at all, and it was perfectly comfortable. 

A bee was on her veil again, walking in a circle in front of Beatrice’s face. Following its path made her a little dizzy. 

“That’s Jasmine.” Mr. Andelin motioned toward Beatrice’s veil. “She’s just curious. And a bit too outgoing for her own good.”

Strange how Mr. Andelin thought of his bees like people, giving them names and personalities.

“I didn’t say nosy, I said curious and outgoing,” Mr. Andelin said. “It was a compliment.”

What was he talking about? “Uh, I don’t—” 

“You might think the veils are weird, but most beekeepers wear them.” Mr. Andelin kept right on talking over her. 

“I didn’t—”

“Of course I don't wear one. But that’s different.” He seemed to be talking to the bee. It was like he’d forgotten Beatrice was there. 

Did all beekeepers talk to their bees? People talked to dogs. And Beatrice had seen a movie once where a boy talked to a cow while he milked it. 

The hum seemed to settle down again, and Mr. Andelin handed Beatrice the red hive tool that looked like a mini crow bar. “See this dark gummy stuff around the edges of the frames? We have to scrape it off and loosen the frames so we can take them out.” 

Beatrice started scraping. It was easier to keep her twisty gut under control when she was doing something. “I read about the gummy stuff. It’s called propolis.”

“Tell me what you read,” Mr. Andelin said. 

While she scraped, she repeated everything she’d learned about how propolis is the glue that bees make to seal up the cracks and protect the hive from intruders. Amazingly, she began to relax and untwist.