Bees

            I dreaded telling Nellie that I wanted to start keeping bees, knowing that she would, in common parlance, "freak out." Still, when the time had almost come for my two three-pound packages of bees to arrive in the mail, I gathered my courage and explained my plan. As I'd expected, she was horrified; frantic gestures and wild exclamations made it clear that she was sure I'd die, and why in the world would I want bees, and maybe it wasn't too late to change my mind, and, for goodness' sake, I should certainly have consulted with her first! I stood my ground, hoping by my own calmness to soothe her fears a little. Gradually she began to take more than a morbid interest, and I described the fascinating life of bees as I'd learned so far from reading everything I could find. Little by little, she began to admit that perhaps, although she never would have thought of it herself, it wasn't an altogether insane idea.

            "They don't want to sting anyone," I assured her. "The only thing they want is to find nectar, make honey, and raise new bees. If I move slowly, gently, quietly around them, they shouldn't be afraid of me and they won't have any reason to sting."

            "Well," Nellie conceded, "you are quiet. But where will they get nectar? Will you let them out of their home?" I've been surprised at how many people have asked me that question. I had assumed that everyone knew bees flew around gathering nectar from flowers, but apparently that was not the case. Since I could see where this line of questioning was headed, I hurried to explain.

            "Yes, I have to let them out. They'll find flowers--all kinds of flowers--and gather nectar from them. They help the flowers, too. They'll help my garden grow better. Every plant has some kind of flower, and the bees carry...[here my Russian failed me, for I don't think I have ever known the word for "pollen"]...powder from one flower to the next to help it grow."

            Nellie shook her head in astonishment. "Amazing! I never knew. But they'll stay in your yard, right? They won't fly away somewhere else and sting someone?"

            Oh, dear. I couldn't guarantee that no one would ever get stung; in fact, I expected that, sooner or later, I myself would suffer a bee sting. Since I wasn't actually worried, however, I could downplay the danger. "No, they'll fly everywhere to find flowers. I read that to make one kilogram of honey, bees travel about fifty thousand miles! But all they want is the nectar, so they'll go right to the flowers and then come back home. They don't want to sting anybody, remember?"

            It was almost time to go, and Nellie was almost reconciled to my beekeeping dreams. Still shaking her head, she looked at me in a kind of dazed wonder. "You're such a strange girl. Now I know why you weren't interested in earrings. All this time I've been trying to get you to pierce your ears, and you've been thinking about bees!"

            The next Tuesday her first words were characteristic: "Did they bite you?"

            I was a bit confused. "Who? What? Did who bite me?" My bees weren't the topmost item on my mind, since I'd been at work all day wrestling with photos of bracelets and necklaces.

            "The bees. Did they bite you? I've been worried sick all week!" Of course she had. Holding out my un-stung arms for inspection, I assured her that my little girls were just as gentle as I'd expected. No casualties, no wounded--except for my foolish dog who, in her excitement to see what I was doing, stepped on one poor bee who stung her paw. But it only happened once. After that one time, Maggie knew to stay well away from the beehives.

            "Ohhh..." Nellie sighed her relief. "All week I've been so afraid. Have they bitten anyone else while they're flying around?"

            Not a soul. Most people in our neighborhood haven't even noticed the existence of forty thousand or so buzzing insects. They really are singleminded little creatures, traveling in fairly straight lines between flowers and home.

            "That's good," she declared. "I was sure that they would fly to someone else's flowers and sting one of their children, maybe, and then the father would be very angry and come to your home and say, 'Why did your bees hurt my child?' and then the police would come and you might have to pay a fine or go to jail for having bees in the city and..." she trailed off as I looked at her in amazement.

            "You thought all that? Nellie, Nellie, you worry too much!" I chided her. "Before I even ordered the bees, I called the police department to make sure it was alright. They said there is no problem, no laws against bees, no codes...I checked everything first, to be sure."

            "Such a clever girl!" Nellie chuckled, both at me and at her own worries. "You think of everything."