SUBSCRIBER-ONLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION: NATURE
Telling the Bees
WINNER
BY LIZ GWINNELL
They say you should tell the bees everything. So I did.
A recipe for fruitcake, the pink sandals I’d bought on impulse, how delicious homemade celeriac soup is on Tuesdays. Old folklore tales suggest telling the bees about weddings and christenings and departures from life, but I think my honeybees appreciate a more varied bulletin.
“Bees?” Celia said, looking as if I’d just announced I was keeping sharks in the bathtub. “Bees?”
“There’s nothing quite like it,” I told her, trying to soften the edges of my new hobby. “Every time I’m with them at the bottom of the garden I feel so....so calm.”
She refused to come any further than the garden shed, peering out from behind it, terrified they’d get in her hair. I was terrified too – not for her but for my girls. With all the spray she put on it they were at serious risk of chemical poisoning.
“What you need to mend a broken heart is boozy lunches, weekends away, spa days,” she said. “Not bees.”