The Hill Farm Honey – Part 1: The Hives

"This one's Margaret," said Ray. "She's moody. That's Winston. He's lazy. And the two at the end are Thatcher and Blair. They don't get on."

Dorothy stared at him. "You've named the hives."

"They've names. I've only learned them."

The farm sat high on the Yorkshire moors, among miles of heather turning purple in August. Dorothy had retired from nursing in the spring, at sixty-two, after forty years on the wards, and had promptly discovered that she did not know how to stop. A card in the village shop window said: Help wanted, honey stall. Own transport essential. Must tolerate eccentrics.

Ray was sixty-six, a big, rumpled man in a flat cap and a beekeeper's veil, with gentle blue eyes and enormous patient hands. He'd farmed these hills all his life, kept sheep and bees, buried a wife, and not entertained company in years.

"Can you tolerate eccentrics?"

"I worked with surgeons," said Dorothy. "I can tolerate anything."

He laughed, a rich, rolling laugh, and handed her a veil.

For weeks she worked the stall by the roadside, selling jars of dark heather honey to walkers, cyclists and the occasional bewildered sheep. In the afternoons, Ray took her up to the hives, showing her how to read the colony by its hum, how to smoke the bees to calm them, how to lift a frame heavy with gold.

"You don't hurry," he said. "You breathe slowly. They know."

"Like patients."

"I'd say so."

She stood in a haze of warm sun and drowsy buzzing, with a frame of honeycomb in her gloved hands, and thought she had never felt so calm.

"Can I ask you something?" said Dorothy.

"Yes."

"Why do you talk to them?"

"Because it's lonely on the hill," said Ray. "And they're good listeners."

"I'm a good listener."

He looked at her. "Aye," he said. "I'd noticed."

"Green?" said Dorothy, a word from her grandson.

"Green," said Ray, completely baffled, completely delighted. "Very green, whatever it means."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Heather Harvest.