Karen nodded. ‘I know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know that they pollinate two-thirds or more of the fruit and vegetables and nuts, and other crops that feed us. I know that without them tens of millions of people or more would probably starve to death.’
He grinned. ‘Your father’s daughter, I see.’
‘Actually, it was Chris Connor that told me about bees.’ Billy glowered. ‘Connor? What the fuck’s he been saying?’
‘That you and my dad did an experiment proving that neonic pesticides are screwing with bees’ brains.’
‘Fucking idiot! He should have known better than to go opening his mouth like that.’ Billy slid the frame back into place and started replacing the crown board and lid. ‘That fucking idiot was my godfather. And he won’t be opening his mouth again, because he’s dead.’
Billy turned, removing his hat, and she saw that his face had gone deathly pale. ‘Dead? How?’
‘A car accident. Apparently. The day after he met me and told me all about you and my dad, and your experiment.’ She paused and cast her gaze over the eighteen silent sentinels. ‘You’re repeating the experiment, aren’t you?’
He sighed and seemed resigned to the fact that there was little point in trying to hide the truth from her any more. He nodded. ‘Here and at two other sites. Chosen because of their purity. Areas uncontaminated by pesticides or herbicides. So that, when we introduce neonics to the diet of the bees, we know with certainty no other cause can be attributed to the effects. We even monitor the bees for disease and mites, though that’s not really a problem, since we had the original colonies checked and declared disease-free before we brought them on site.’
‘So nine of these would be control hives?’
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Oh, you know about that, do you?’
‘Chris explained.’ She nodded towards the hives. ‘I’m assuming that you let the bees in half of the hives forage for pollen naturally, and feed the other half with... what? Imidacloprid?’
Billy grinned now. ‘You must have been paying attention, girl. You’d make a good student.’ He paused. ‘We actually let both groups forage naturally, and at certain times feed both groups sugar syrup. The difference is that we introduce tiny quantities of imidacloprid into the sugar syrup of the non-control group. The kind of quantities they would expect to encounter in the pollen and nectar of any environment where crops have been treated by neonic pesticides. About 2.5 parts per billion, which is already proven not to kill bees.’
‘But it destroys their learning and memory.’
He nodded grimly. ‘It does.’
‘How do you know that, Billy?’
‘Because we monitor their performance.’
‘How? How’s that possible?’
He shrugged. ‘Lots of ways. We measure the colony once a week by weighing the hives. But only at night, when they’ve all returned. We mark the queen to keep an eye on her and make sure she’s not been replaced. We photograph all the frames, after shaking off the bees, to estimate areas of honey stores, and pollen, sealed brood, larvae, eggs. We place cameras above the entrance to the hives to collect data on activity levels. Mainly the number of bees returning with pollen. We can measure the amount of pollen gathered by using pollen traps. And we can use that same pollen, when foraging is good and they’re not interested in the sugar syrup, to contaminate it with imidacloprid then give back to them the following day. We even screen foraging bees for gut parasites at the entrance to the hive using a handheld field microscope.’
‘So the effect of the pesticide is measurable?’
‘Absolutely. And, Karen, it is seriously fucking with their ability to do their job.’ He grinned. ‘Which is...?’ He held open hands out towards her to prompt a response. She tutted and raised her eyes skyward. ‘To feed the world.’ He rang an imaginary bell. ‘Brrrrring! Well done, you’ve just won a microscope and a holiday for two in a tropical rainforest somewhere in South America.’
She shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. ‘What’s amazing about bees, Karen, is their ability to associate colour and smell with good food sources. You can actually teach them to remember and identify smells that will lead them to food. They are so good at it that the military are now using bees to sniff out explosives, like landmines, or IEDs. Feed them after exposing them to the smell of any explosive substance, and they will identify it with food. Release a bunch of bees where you suspect there are buried landmines, and they will immediately cluster around them, smelling the explosive. Without, of course, setting them off.’ His face clouded. ‘But the effect of the neonics is to destroy that ability. It damages their brain cells. The cells don’t die, but they stop generating the energy that fuels their memory. So they don’t remember the smell, or the colour, or the way to the food or the way back. And, you know, bees communicate all this information to one another by these amazing dances they do in the hives. Where the good food is, what direction to go, how far. But, without memory, there is no accurate communication. And, without either, the colony will wither and die.’ He turned to wave his arm towards his hives. ‘And that’s exactly what’s been happening here.’
He raised his head, and Karen followed his gaze up through the trees to where the first stars were appearing faintly as blue faded to black. He took her by the arm, and she was reminded momentarily of Richard Deloit and the way he had expelled her from the offices of OneWorld. ‘Come on, we should go back to the cottage before it gets dark and we get lost in the woohooooods.’ He waved his arms, ghostlike in the air, and laughed. ‘Actually, after eighteen months of this, I reckon I could make it back blindfolded.’
Darkness fell suddenly, and evening became night even before they got back to the cottage. Strangely, it almost seemed lighter. The sky was clear and crusted with stars, and a nearly full moon rose up over the hills to cast its shimmering silver luminescence on the still, reflective surface of the loch.
Billy switched on a light when they entered the cottage, and the dismal yellow that washed over the room from the single naked bulb at its centre made it seem even more miserable. It really was a mess, Karen saw now. The floor strewn with discarded food wrappers and cigarette ends, and dried mud from caked boots. Clothes lay over the backs of chairs, and socks and underwear hung drying from a rack near the stove. Karen looked around with disgust. The contrast with the pristine, sanitised middle-class existence that her mother had contrived for her in suburban Edinburgh could hardly have been more stark, or unpleasant.
Billy followed her eyes and looked embarrassed. He ran his hand back through his hair as if somehow trying to make himself more presentable. ‘If I’d known I was having a visitor, I’d have tidied up. Never seems much point when you’re just on your own.’ He nodded towards a large flat-screen television in the corner. ‘TV’s my only company. No signal up here, of course. I’ve got a satellite dish out back.’
Karen could only imagine how depressing it would be. ‘And you’ve been here eighteen months?’