Homing by John Saul

big flaw of the fertilizer: though it didn't kill the bees exposed to it, it made them sterile. Slowly, all the hives in the area had died.
    And that, a year later, had become The Problem.
    For two years UiriiGrow had been working on a solution, but so far had come up with nothing.
    Carl Henderson, in the meantime, had been conducting his own research in the privacy of his own lab, applying all the knowledge of his years of study and experimentation to the problem. And today, contained within the brown vial, he held in his hand what might finally be the solution everyone was looking for.
    A biological solution to a biological problem.
    If it worked the way Henderson thought it would, the queen cells into which it was injected would produce bees whose descendants were immune to the effects of the fertilizer, and would continue reproducing new generations.
    Not only would UniGrow be relieved of the burden of having to bring in new hives each time a crop season began, but relieved as well of having to pay the enormous damages the courts were already beginning to award the local farmers whose fields had been affected by the fertilizer.
    instead the company would begin to enjoy the profits the new fertilizer, marketed in conjunction with Henderson's altered strain of bees, would generate. And Carl Henderson, whose genius had discovered the answer, would reap at least a percentage of those profits.
    The Problem would be solved; everyone would be happy If it worked. Henderson was not yet quite certain it would. In fact, the last refinement he'd experimented with bad resulted primarily in the increased virulence of the bees' venom.
    It was that venom, Carl-knew, that Molly Spellman had reacted to the previous week, though he'd been careful not to contradict the various doctors who had simply assumed the girl had had a violent allergic reaction to an ordinary bee. The child, after all, had recovered, so no real harm had been done, and Henderson was almost certain that his newest creation would have no bad side effects.
    Carefully removing a hypodermic needle from its case, Carl filled it, returned it to the case, then put the case into one of his shirt pockets, snapping the flap closed just to be on the safe side.
    Leaving the Cherokee unlocked, he crossed the road and started along the dirt track that led to the beehives which he himself had placed on the far side of the farm, well out of sight of the house.
    There were thirty-six of them, placed in three well spaced rows of twelve hives each. Each of the hives was four boxes high, and Henderson had marked several of the boxes with the numbers of the frames that contained the queen cells he planned to treat. Glancing around to be sure he was alone, he set to work, carefully lifting off the first two half-depth supers that formed the highest levels of the hive. Setting them aside, he turned his attention to the now exposed full-sized super, which was nothing more than a white-painted box designed to hold a rack of brood frames. The design was simple, and hadn't changed substantially since L. L. Langstroth had invented it in 1851.
    The key to it was the precise spacing of the frames inside, which allowed a bee space of exactly five-eighths of an inch. Had there been less space between the frames, the bees simply wouldn't have used them; more, and they would have begun filling it in. Very gently, Henderson lifted the fourth frame out of its slot. Heavy with comb, the wooden rectangle was covered with bees, but as Carl lifted the tray into the sunlight, most of them quickly took off, or dropped back into the squirming mass below.
    Easily finding the queen cell he'd identified earlier in the week, Henderson carefully pierced its wax cap with the hypodermic needle and injected a drop of the fluid from the brown vial into it. Withdrawing the needle from the cell, he plugged the tiny hole by scraping a fragment of wax over it, pressing the wax into place with his little finger. As soon as he