The Beekeeper – Part 1: Smoke and Honey

"Slow hands," said Henry. "Slow, calm hands. They can feel it if you're afraid."

"I'm not afraid," said Ruth.

"Your shoulders are up around your ears."

Ruth laughed and dropped them. She was fifty-six, a retired nurse from Hobart in a white beekeeper's veil and borrowed gloves, standing in a clearing of blue gum trees with the afternoon humming around her. A hundred wooden hives stood in tidy rows. The air smelled of eucalyptus and warm wax, and the sound of bees filled every corner of the sky.

Henry, sixty, was the owner, lean and sun-brown, with kind creased eyes and a smoker in his hand. He puffed a gentle cloud across the hive entrance, lifted the lid and showed her the frames, thick with gold. "The queen is there," he said. "See her? Longer body. She is calm. Everyone is calm when she's calm."

"Is that a rule of thumb?"

"It's the whole farm."

She had taken the summer job to fill a quiet year after retirement. Her friends thought it was eccentric. Her daughter thought it was brave. She thought it was necessary. After thirty-three years of night shifts, she wanted to spend a season doing something slow and sweet.

By January she was driving the ute, labelling jars and drinking tea on the verandah at the end of each long afternoon. She and Henry talked about everything: the hospital, his late wife, the long dry years, his bees. One evening they sat in comfortable silence as the sun slid into the gum trees.

"I didn't expect to like you so much," said Henry.

"I didn't expect to like it here."

"Do you?"

"I do." Ruth looked at his hand beside hers on the arm of the chair. "May I?"

He turned it palm up, and she laced her fingers through his.

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Harvest.

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Harvest.