The bees are in the walls.The W.E.L.L.was right.
I found them through a crawlspace under the house (I was the only one willing to go in), and we confirmed with a “bee relocation expert” we finally got out here. They don’t have a centralized hive.The house is the hive.They move through the spaces between the walls every day, following the sun as it passes overhead, following the warmth, I guess.He said he’s never seen anything like it. He set up swarm traps in the trees outside and said if those don’t work, it’ll take a team to extract them.And maybe gutting the house.
The really bad news is that there’s no comb, no honey, no brood cells from what we could tell. And maybe no queen.With winter coming, that all means they might not survive to the end of the year.
Mom is thrilled.She sees an end in sight.And as for the “haunting,” she’s now blamed every weird thing that’s happened in the house these past few months on the bees.
None of my fam wanted to believe in the supernatural to begin with so I’m officially useless again. She told me I didn’t have to stay. I could go back to New York. But, she doesn’t know about the “diary entries” She wouldn’t believe me if I did.
As far as I know, my grandmother never kept a diary.I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I think her “diary” is what she told the bees before she died.And if those memories, those “entries” are the last connection to her, I can’t just leave and let them go.I can’t let them take the bees or gut this house.Or let them die without doing what I can to keep them safe.She would want me to. I’m not much for “purpose” but I feel like I need to be here, stay here. I need to see this through. For her.
19 Comments
I’m with Bash on this one. It feels wrong to try to relocate the bees and I’m so glad that they’re going to stay and try to help them.
I wonder if introducing a new queen would help? It’s probably too close to winter for the queen to be accepted and produce winter bees anyway but it might be worth a try. Not having any honey isn’t necessarily the end of the hive; theoretically, Bash could just feed them white sugar or a white sugar syrup – it’s not ideal but it’s a known strategy that can keep potentially starving hives alive for long periods if they don’t have honey stores. Not having brood cells is probably the most pressing issue, since summer and winter bees are biologically different and this is around when you’d start seeing winter bees emerging from the brood and I’m not sure what, if anything, a traditional beekeeper could do to remedy that.
All of this is predicated on traditional beekeeping and entomology though, so who knows what these bees need? Considering Bash’s grandmother passed a while ago, it’s a bit surprising that they’re even still alive, since summer bees have a lifespan of only 6 weeks or so, and without a queen or comb they wouldn’t have brood to replace them. That implies to me that maybe they aren’t just your typical hive. Bash’s grandmother’s admittedly tenuous connection to the BotW combined with her careful caretaking of and story-telling to the bees could have imbued them with some kind of magical essence. After all, it’s not exactly typical for mundane bees to shake a whole house whenever someone talks about selling it.
That’s what I was thinking – there’s no way they’d still be around after this amount of time.
And yes, Bash clearly needs to become the new “queen” of the hive.
I’m gonna preface this by saying that I know practically nothing about bees. But then again…if we’re dealing with magiq bees, perhaps all bets are off anyway. So with that in mind…what if there’s no queen because Bash’s grandmother was/is the queen in some way? Like, it does seem unlikely that normal bees could do all the other “haunting” bits…there’s gotta be something else here still, I think…
If Bash’s grandmother WAS the queen, can Bash “inherit” that role?
Let’s get Bash to encase themselves in a sugar cube and let the bees eat their way to them. That works for normal beekeepers introducing normal queen bees, I’m sure itll work great in this case haha!
The bee’s may need relocated outside if Bash/Bash’s family doesn’t want to do anything about or with them. They need a queen and comb to survive, so I really hope Bash does something.
I’m still banging the “tell the bees/house a story” drum. It sort of worked with the castle, so maybe the bees too—we already know they seem to listen.
Ooooh I like this! Maybe the bees just need to be introduced to Bash to see them as the new queen/trusted bee-friend?
would it be fair to ask Bash to be the new Bee Captain though? would that mean they’d either have to 1) stay in that house for fear of bee-related hauntings resuming or 2) take a swarm of potentially magiq bees with them everywhere?
I like the idea of trying to tell the bees a story…but also I feel like there’s a story they need to tell us too…I feel like we don’t know for 100% sure what the bees want
Story time! I call the comfy chair.
For real though, I’m very glad that it’s bees and not something more sinister.
Seriously! I still remember how creeped out I was!
But… what happens if they’re sinister bees?!?
Plot twist: Murder hornets are a Silver plot to take over the pollinating of magimystic plants.
Murder hornets aside, while I do think that we need to find a way to save the bees, I also don’t we can (or should) make Bash their new ruler like Tinker said above. Like, as much as Bash has support from their family for who they are, I’m not sure they want to drop everything they’ve built and move back to Missouri. Granted, all of us are faced with life changes and positions that we don’t always choose. In order words, magiq flows in mysterious ways, and maybe the flow of magiq is pulling Bash home like it called their Grandmother Carolyn. If that isn’t the case, though, what can we do to help?
My first thought is to help the bees understand loss. And that usually means listening as much as speaking.
Perhaps it’s Bash’s task to hear what their grandmother was to the bees, and to help the bees to understand the loss of this figure and how, as the saying goes, her memory is a blessing.
Yes, I think the bees will “go”, whatever that means for magiq bees, and Bash can also go back to their life. I like the idea of “Queen” Bash, but they are not the type.
I think the two things that might happen are A) the bees “go” to the magical bee realm, or B) we could maybe figure out a way to help them survive long enough to transmit a message or communicate, if that’s what they want, get closure maybe. Then introduce a new queen or integrate them into another hive (which is apparently possible especially if they don’t have a queen at the time), and see if we can’t give them a normal happy healthy bee life after their service.
Let’s look at who The W.E.L.L has lead us to and where it brought us so far: Endri, to peace with decisions made with Determiner, SpiritSeer to the knowledge and comfort that she has not been abandoned by yet another community. It sounds like Bash has unresolved issues with family; my guess is that The W.E.L.L. – bringing Carolyn Brighton’s thoughts to Bash, via the bees, may bring some sort of closure to them.
At least, that’s what I hope.
Ooooo, a chapter of resolution! At least for the Mounties…
Think about it, its actually all about family, going all the way back – Deidre gets to know her heritage & gets Cole; Marty gets his son; Endri & Spirit get us.
Bash needs to figure out, through the bees, how to resolve their family challenges. I bet the bees our only sticking around long enough to give Bash peace, a final gift from their grandmother.