Brabbins thrust his hand under the tap, letting the cold water play across his flaming skin. It was already swelling, he saw, rising around twin punctures. He scratched at them, half-remembering advice about getting out beestings, but all that emerged was his own blood, somehow paler and with a yellow tinge. Is that poison? Is that what killed Swann? And Holmes? he thought, and suspected that it was.
When his hand felt marginally better, although it remained reddened and swollen and painful to move, Brabbins picked up the papers from where he had dropped them, and then went through the house. The lounge and parlour had open fireplaces, piled with logs and kindling, so he shut the doors to both rooms, thankful that they fitted snug in their frames. He also shut the kitchen door, closing off the noise of the bees to a lesser degree. Already, tiny dark shapes were gathering on the outside of the small glass pane in the front door, their indistinct forms filling the available space. From behind both of the doors he had closed came the faint sound of something striking the wood, not hard but repeatedly. Brabbins went upstairs, checking all the windows as he went. None were open; the house was sealed.
Finally, Brabbins took the papers into the study, righting the chair and sitting down, noticing as he did so that he was shaking, nauseous. The poison? he wondered. The fear?
The Bees.
For a moment, he tried to put the bees out of his mind; they had him penned in the house, and he had no idea why they were acting so aggressively, but his policeman’s instincts, honed by years of sifting through humanity’s mud and detritus, of making sense from the senseless, told him the answers lay in the sheets of paper that Swann had been holding.
They were bound, he saw, neatly written and tied at the top and bottom left corners with loops of thick twine. He recognized the writing as Holmes’ from the repeated ‘No’ on the letters, the words firm and decisive. The paper was thick and heavy, expensive, and the writing was interrupted here and there with illustrations and tables. Is this what Swann died for? Brabbins thought as he looked at them. Holmes? Two men, dead because of this?
Yes, he thought, and began to read.
It is my belief that British bees can be improved, Brabbins read on the first page, by the introduction of new queens from other breeds which possess the correct, desired, and beneficial traits. Having achieved some success in the breeding, and becoming familiar with the habits, strengths, and weaknesses of the more usual Western Honey Bee, in this paper I shall describe the initial attempts to improve upon this breed and outline any results that are obtained.
Whilst the Western Honey Bee is currently the universal breed hived in Britain, and is ideally suited to both the climate and the geography of this land, increasing industrialization and the spread of towns and concurrent population growth may require, in future, a bee that can travel further in search of pollen, or which has a longer breeding and production season and from which increased amounts of honey and wax can be harvested. Accordingly, looking overseas for hardier breeds to increase the value and usefulness of our stock is the only logical thing to do.
Initially, of course, a suitable breed must be identified and procured. Clearly, not all breeds will be suitable for husbandry because of differences in temperament or physiology. However, many come from the same root stock and so may prove to be viable partners. I shall endeavour to explain here why various breeds were dismissed and to show how the ultimate decision was made.
Brabbins stopped reading and leafed through the next few pages, seeing little of interest other than detailed descriptions of breeds and their failings. Names such as Buckfast Bee, Midnite Bee, European Dark Bee, and Carnolian Bee jostled alongside phrases like movable comb hives, Langstroth spaces and Dadant design. English, but still another language.
Eventually, Brabbins came to a new paragraph that read, After exhaustive study, it is clear that we must look further afield for the required breeding partner. Records of the earliest beekeepers, although scant, identify several species cultivated in more isolated regions, often by monks or other closed communities. These are the rarest of breeds and ones about whom little but the briefest of facts are known, except those which were written down by their original keepers. Of these, most can be dismissed immediately as variants on the breeds already discussed. However, one would seem to be an ideal candidate: the Northern Wild Bee, occasionally called the Volk’s or Wolf Bee. Almost unknown outside of a tiny area of Russia, this animal may be the perfect partner in this experiment.
Below this were a series of diagrams, close up of bee parts that Brabbins only partly recognized; a segmented eye, a rounded body with measurement details alongside it, a wing. Further down were tables, each annotated with phrases like queen breeding pattern and season lengths and gestation and hatching cycles. Below each table was a short explanation of the way in which the Northern Wild Bee was an improvement on the Western Honey Bee. Finally, a longer paragraph ended the section: The Northern Wild Bee has a larger body and can travel further in a day than Britain’s indigenous bee population, giving the capacity for greater range and for greater honey and wax yield. It is physically stronger and has evolved to live in the harsher climes of northern Europe. It was transported to Germany in the early nineteenth century but proved a difficult creature to manage and did not last long, leaving only a few wild colonies scattered across the northern countries, their spread controlled by the depredations of the harshest of winter climates and the landscape. Despite problems sourcing the Northern Wild Bee as a result of the current world political situation, eggs were gathered from the remaining wild colonies and the experiment is now ready to begin. What follows is a record of its progress.
Brabbins stopped reading and leafed through the remaining papers. They were written as diary entries, some with illustrations, each dated. The earliest contained repeating phrases like breeding rates and cross-breed production and, once, reproduction characteristics and techniques which made Brabbins rub his face in wonderment. What had this man, Holmes, done? Played with his bees while the letters piled up in his parlour, while the war raged in fields black with torn earth and death, and while tiny individual tragedies happened in back-alleys and homes across the country? For what? Wax and honey? And what had he done?
The next entry Brabbins read started with the word Success! and another picture, this one a delicately drawn picture of a bee. To Brabbins, it looked like any other bee; furred, with a bulbous body and head, and wings covered in the tracery of veins. Holmes had clearly seen differences to it, though. He had arrowed parts of the diagram, each arrow neatly labelled, 31% average increased mass, larger wingspan/distance for flying, slightly increased brain capacity. There was more, but Brabbins stopped reading and flicked on to the next entries.
April 2nd: I have set up a single hive of the Northern Wild Bee crossbreed, alongside my existing Western Honey Bee hives; by doing so, I hope to show scientifically how much greater the productivity of the new strain is in comparison with our existing breeds. Already, the bees seem to be travelling farther and wider than the drones from the other hives. The pollen they collect is a different color, as though it includes content from plants that the other bees cannot reach or find. The first yields of honey have been promising in amount, although its flavour is slightly bitter and leaves a strange taste in the mouth after it is swallowed. The comb that contains it certainly seems sturdier, and the wax that can be harvested of a very high quality. One unexpected thing about the new breed is that its size gives it some increased ability to stave off the soporific effects of the smoker, requiring an increased level of caution from the keeper to avoid stings.