Page 8 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

A perfectly constructed windbreak stands between my two hundred hive boxes and the northern ridge.

It spans the length of the apiary. Staggered wooden slats, anchored deep into the frozen earth with reinforced posts. The wood is fresh-cut pine, the scent of sawdust hanging in the damp morning air.

I drop my smoker in the grass. It hits the dirt with a dull thud.

I walk forward, my boots moving on autopilot, my lungs refusing to expand. I reach out and press my bare hand flat against the rough wood of the nearest slat. It's rock-solid. Immovable.

This isn't just a fence slapped together in the dark. It’s engineered. The boards are staggered with precise, two-inch gaps. Any first-year beekeeper or idiot with a hammer would build a solid wall, thinking it blocks the wind better. But a solid wall creates a vacuum on the leeward side, causing a turbulent downdraft that rips the lids right off the hives. This staggered design diffuses the wind, breaking its back while allowing a gentle airflow to pass through. It protects the flight paths of the Russian hybrids. It shields the queens. It takes the topography of my twelve acres into account.

He built this.

Sometime in the dead of night, Alas built a fortress for my bees.

He didn't ask me for permission. He didn't ask for a blueprint. He didn't demand a thank you or wait around to receive one. He just looked at my property, saw a threat to my colonies, and neutralized it with his bare hands.

My throat tightens. A hard, jagged lump forms right behind my collarbone.

Two years. Two solid years of doing every single thing alone. When Grandpa died, the silence of this farm became a living thing—it filled the rooms, pressed against the windows, waited in the honey shed for someone who was never coming back. Every broken frame, every sick colony, every snapped fence post, every freeze warning—it all landed squarely on my shoulders. I refused to ask for help. Asking for help meant I was weak. Asking for help meant the town would look at me with pity, whisper that the little beekeeper girl couldn't hack it, and advise me to sell the land to the developers circling Pine Valley like vultures.

I’ve fought, bled, and exhausted myself into a hollow shell of a human being just to prove I can hold this ground by myself. I built armor out of stubbornness and isolation. No one gets in. No one carries the weight but me.

And now, staring at this towering, flawless structure of fresh pine, that armor cracks.

A ragged breath punches out of my lungs. Heat crawls up my neck.

He didn't fix a broken pipe or change a tire. He learned the wind patterns of a Russian hybrid honeybee. He researched the angle needed to protect a queen he doesn't even own. The meticulous care hidden beneath his exterior is terrifying. It’s a threat to every boundary I’ve meticulously constructed.

I trace the head of a galvanized screw, driven flush into the wood.

"You arrogant, high-handed bastard," I whisper to the empty meadow.

But the words lack bite. They sound suspiciously like awe.

I turn my back on the windbreak, wiping a stray, traitorous tear from the corner of my eye before it can fall. I don’t cry over carpentry. I don’t cry over prospects with calloused hands and beeswax scents clinging to their leather.

I pick up my smoker and head toward the honey shed. The single-room wooden structure sits twenty yards downhill from the farmhouse. It’s my sanctuary. The door protests with a familiar squeak as I push it open.

The smell hits me instantly. Warm beeswax, raw clover honey, and the faint, lingering scent of scorched pine from the cold smoker. It coats the inside of my lungs, grounding me.

Inside, the room is as I left it. The cast-iron uncapping tank squats in the center of the floor. Rows of empty supers are stacked neatly along the left wall. My bench, stained with decades of wax drippings and gouges from my hive tool, runs under the single window facing the mountain ridge.

I pull the string on the bare bulb overhead. Yellow light floods the cramped space. I grab a handful of dried pine needles and a twisted piece of burlap, stuffing them into the belly of the smoker. I strike a match. The flame catches, curling the edges of the burlap. I pump the bellows, watching the white smoke billow out of the spout.

Pump. Breathe. Pump. Breathe.

I need to focus. I have twenty hives to inspect before noon.

The crunch of tires on gravel cuts through the morning silence.

I release the bellows and step out of the shed, my hand instinctively dropping to the steel hive tool hooked to my belt. The Syndicate has been getting bolder.

A familiar, battered sedan rolls to a stop near the farmhouse.

The driver's side door opens, and Carol steps out.

She looks tired, but there’s a distinct, unbreakable steel in her spine that wasn't there a month ago. She shuts the door and walks toward me, carrying a large stainless-steel thermos and a canvas duffel bag.

I relax my grip on the hive tool. "Carol. It's early."