Beekeeping for Beginners by Laurie R. King Page A

flow never falters.”
    —Chicago Tribune , for O Jerusalem
“Imaginative … dazzling. Lush, colorful and utterly compelling, this is a superbly wrought novel of suspense that evokes its period with enviable panache. Four stars out of four stars.”
    —Detroit Free Press , for The Game
“A fascinating and often moving account of a friendship so unusual and so compelling that one almost accepts it as being historically real.”
    —The Denver Post , for The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
“[One of] the best American authors of traditional mystery fiction.”
    —The New York Sun , for Locked Rooms
“King writes real novels. There’s nothing elementary about her attention to period details and the behavior of her well-developed characters.”
    —Orlando Sentinel , for The Moor
“Even readers who resist on principle the notion of resurrecting a previous author’s creation should be won over by this delightful and creative pastiche.”
    —The Wall Street Journal , for A Letter of Mary

Other Novels by
LAURIE R. KING
Mary Russell Novels
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive

And coming soon …
PIRATE KING

Kate Martinelli Novels
A Grave Talent
To Play the Fool
With Child
Night Work
The Art of Detection

And
A Darker Place
Folly
Keeping Watch
Califa’s Daughters (as Leigh Richards)
Touchstone

Beekeeping for Beginners is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    2011 Bantam Electronic Edition
    Copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King
Excerpt from A Study in Sherlock copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger
Excerpt from Pirate King copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King
    All rights reserved.
    Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
    B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    This book contains excerpts from the forthcoming books A Study in Sherlock and Pirate King . These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.
    eISBN: 978-0-345-52993-0
    Cover design: Marietta Anastassatos
Cover images: frog-traveller/Shutterstock (honeycomb); Peter Waters/Shutterstock (bee); Oxana Zuboff/Shutterstock (landscape)
    www.bantamdell.com
    v3.1

To the new bee

1
    Any reasonable man may reach a point in his life where self-destruction becomes a door worthy of consideration. A point at which it seems that the least a walking anachronism can do for the world is to remove himself from cluttering the landscape.
    It was a cool, sunny day in April, 1915. I had set out at dawn from the silent villa to which I had retreated out of the London fogs some years before, carrying with me both the impedimenta of my avocation, and the means to end my life.
    Do not imagine that I was unaware of the multiple ironies: My beekeeping task required a clear, warm day, while the other was more suited to a bleak and inhospitable sky; my acts were concerned with the populous community of a hive, while my thoughts were at their most solitary; my rucksack carried both restoration, and death.
    My mind was not entirely made up. However, a lifetime dedicated to the science of thought has taught me that focusing the mind’s eye on one matter encourages greater clarity of vision along the periphery of the mental gaze. I should proceed with my surface task, while permitting the deeper machinery of my mind to turn.
    In any event, off I walked onto the Downs that morning with a trio of bottles. Two contained paint, red and blue: With these I might track a wild—or rather, feral—colony for one of my empty