Telling the Bees by Peggy Hesketh Page B

her Bible study class the following evening. He had at first politely declined, explaining that one of his hives was full to the brim with honey ready to harvest. He told her he didn’t think he could manage to tend to his beekeeping chores that afternoon and still find time to accompany her to her evening class as well.
    That was when my mother offered to help my father with his chores, though she didn’t have the faintest notion of what a super was or what it entailed to lift a full one off a buzzing, teaming hive of one hundred thousand or so riled honeybees and replace it with a fresh one primed with empty foundation frames.
    My father didn’t know my mother well enough at the time to know that once she set her mind to something, she seldom saw fit to change it, or that she clearly had seen something in his shy but steady ways that appealed to her.
    I didn’t mind my father’s silence. I will admit the sound of another voice might have been a comfort in the long, hard days we spent together changing supers and harvesting our honey, especially after my mother died. But I believe this may be the reason why I’m not particularly lonely these days, not missing a voice I never grew accustomed to hearing.
    I do not wish to imply by this that my father was a distant man, nor was he a mean or vindictive man like some I have seen who use stony silence as a weapon, every bit as withering to a child’s spirit as a harsh word or a hand raised in anger. I believe my father could be quite instructive when the need or the want for speech arose. He just chose not to waste words on idle chatter.
    My mother was hardly a chatterbox, but she seemed to crave human conversation, and she demonstrated right from the start an uncanny facility for deciphering the language of bees. As did Claire.
    And my mother, bless her soul, possessed an uncanny talent for sizing up people and situations in order to take whatever action she deemed fitting for the circumstances at hand. I believe that is why she and Claire got on so well.
    Upon learning of my invitation into the Straussmans’ house for tea on the day my father and I had been summoned to take care of the “bee problem,” my mother decided that common courtesy dictated a reciprocal invitation to the Straussman sisters. While my sister Eloise was closest in age to the offspring and so should have been the natural bearer of this neighborly gesture, she rather indignantly pointed out that since I had been the beneficiary of our neighbors’ hospitality I should shoulder the unenviable task of inviting them over to our house on Friday afternoon for some of my mother’s honeyed scones and lemonade.
    I was surprised when my mother agreed. Knowing that I had inherited my father’s tendency toward reticence, she took the precaution of writing out a formal invitation to our young neighbors, in what seemed to me an unusually flowery script, before sending me off to deliver it directly after supper.
    It was Hilda who answered the door when I knocked the second time, the first and somewhat softer knock having brought no response whatsoever.
    “This is for you. And your sister,” I believe I stammered, and then I thrust the note my mother had written in her hand.
    Wordlessly, Hilda unfolded the scented paper. And, after reading the invitation, she just as wordlessly turned and closed the front door behind her, leaving me standing dumbfounded on the unlit porch.
    Given Hilda’s less-than-forthcoming response, I was surprised to see my mother bustling about our kitchen Friday morning preparing for the afternoon get-together with the Straussman sisters that my sister and I were convinced would never take place.
    When we returned home from school that same day, we found a plate of my mother’s fresh scones laid out on the dining room table along with two small serving bowls filled with orange blossom honey and homemade currant jam.
    My sister shook her head as if to say “She’s gone mad as a