May - The honey bus: a memoir of loss, courage and a girl saved by bees

An extraordinary story of a girl, her grandfather and one of natures most mysterious and beguiling creatures: the honeybee.

Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. That first close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May, and in that moment she discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes, in the secret world of bees.

May turned to her grandfather and the art of beekeeping as an escape from her troubled reality. Her mother had receded into a volatile cycle of neurosis and despair and spent most days locked away in the bedroom. It was during this pivotal time in Mays childhood that she learned to take care of herself, forged an unbreakable bond with her grandfather and opened her eyes to the magic and wisdom of nature.

The bees became a guiding force in Mays life, teaching her about family and community, loyalty and survival and the unequivocal relationship between a mother and her child. Part memoir, part beekeeping odyssey, The Honey Bus is an unforgettable story about finding home in the most unusual of places, and how a tiny, little-understood insect could save a life.

Meredith May

The Honey Bus

A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees

For Grandpa

E. Franklin Peace
19262015

Contents

So work the honeybees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the art of order to a peopled kingdom.

William Shakespeare, Henry V

Swarm

1980

Swarm season always arrived by telephone. The red rotary phone jangled to life every spring with frantic callers reporting honeybees in their walls, or in their chimneys, or in their trees.

I was pouring Grandpas honey over my corn bread when he came out of the kitchen with that sly smile that said wed have to let our breakfast go cold again. I was ten, and had been catching swarms with him for almost half my life, so I knew what was coming next. He slugged back his coffee in one gulp and wiped his mustache with the back of his arm.

Got us another one, he said.

This time the call came from the private tennis ranch about a mile away on Carmel Valley Road. As I climbed into the passenger seat of his rickety pickup, he tapped the gas pedal to coax it to life. The engine finally caught and we screeched out of the driveway, kicking up a spray of gravel behind us. He whizzed past the speed limit signs, which I knew from riding with Granny said to go twenty-five. We had to hurry to catch the swarm because the bees might get an idea to fly off somewhere else.

Grandpa careened into the tennis club and squealed to a stop near a cattle fence. He leaned his shoulder into his jammed door and creaked it open with a grunt. We stepped into a mini-cyclone of bees, a roaring inkblot in the sky, banking left and right like a flock of birds. My heart raced with them, frightened and awestruck at the same time. It seemed like the air was throbbing.

Why are they doing that? I shouted over the din.

Grandpa bent down on one knee and leaned toward my ear.

The queen left the hive because it got too crowded inside, he explained. The bees followed her because they cant live without her. Shes the only bee in the colony that lays eggs.

I nodded to show Grandpa that I understood.

The swarm was now hovering near a buckeye tree. Every few seconds, a handful of bees darted out of the pack and disappeared into the leaves. I walked closer, and looked up to see that the bees were gathering on a branch into a ball about the size of an orange. More bees joined the cluster until it swelled to the size of a basketball, pulsating like a heart.

The queen landed there, Grandpa said. The bees are protecting her.

When the last few bees found their way to the group, the air became still again.

Go wait for me back by the truck, Grandpa whispered.

I leaned against the front bumper, and watched as he climbed a stepladder until he was nose-to-nose with the bees. Dozens of them crawled up his bare arms as he sawed the branch with a hacksaw. Just then a groundskeeper started up a lawn mower, startling the bees and sending them back into the air in a panic. Their buzz rose to a piercing whine, and the bees gathered into a tighter, faster circle.

Dammit all to hell! I heard Grandpa cuss.

He called out to the groundskeeper, and the mower sputtered off. While Grandpa waited for the swarm to settle back down into the tree, I felt something crawling on my scalp. I reached up and touched fuzz, and then felt wings and tiny legs thrashing in my hair. I tossed my head to dislodge the bee, but it only became more tangled and distressed, its buzz rising to the high pitch of a dentists drill. I took deep breaths to brace for what I knew was coming.

When the bee buried its stinger in my skin, the burn raced in a line from my scalp to my molars, making me clench my jaw. I frantically searched my hair again, and stifled a scream as I discovered another bee swimming in my hair, then another, my alarm radiating out wider and wider from behind my rib cage as I felt more fuzzy lumps than I could count, a small squadron of honeybees struggling with a terror equal to my own.

Then I smelled bananasthe scent bees emit to call for backupand I knew that I was under attack. I felt another searing prick at my hairline followed by a sharp pierce behind my ear, and collapsed to my knees. I was fainting, or maybe I was praying. I thought that I might be dying. Within seconds, Grandpa had my head in his hands.

Now try not to move, he said. Youve got about five more in here. Ill get them all out, but you might get stung again.

Another bee stabbed me. Each sting magnified the pain until it felt like my scalp was on fire, but I grabbed the truck tire and hung on.

How many more? I whispered.

Just one, he said.

When it was all over, Grandpa took me into his arms. I rested my pounding head on his chest, which was muscled from a lifetime of lifting fifty-pound hive boxes full of honey. He gently placed his calloused hand on my neck.

Your throat closing up?

I showed him my biggest inhale and exhale. My lips felt oddly tingly.

Why didnt you call out to me? he asked.

I didnt have an answer. I didnt know.

My legs were shaky, and I let Grandpa carry me to the truck and place me on the bench seat. Id been stung before, but never by this many bees at once, and Grandpa was worried that my body might go into shock. If my face swelled up, he said, I might have to go to the emergency room. I waited with instructions to honk the horn if I couldnt breathe as he finished sawing the branch. He shook the bees into a white wooden box and carried it to the truck bed while I reached up and checked the hot lumps on my scalp. They were tight and hard, and it seemed like they were getting bigger. I worried that pretty soon my whole head would be puffed out like a pumpkin.

Grandpa hustled back into the truck and started the engine.

Just a minute, he said, taking my head in his hands and exploring my scalp with his fingers. I winced, certain he was pressing marbles into my head.

Missed one, he said, drawing a dirty fingernail sideways across my scalp to remove the stinger. Grandpa always said that squeezing the stinger between your thumb and finger is the worst way to pull it out, because it pushes all the venom into you. He held out his palm to show me the stinger with the pinhead-sized venom sac still attached.