The Beekeeper by Elizabeth Graver Someone was stealing his honey. He had no idea how long it had been going on; he didn't keep close track of the stand. But one morning, as Burl turned into his driveway after making a delivery in town, he noticed that the jars were lined up in a neat row like soldiers standing at attention. He pulled over, figuring one of the widows must have come by, bought a jar and done a little housekeeping. He had started helping them with odd jobs after their husbands died, and now they seemed to see him as a fix-up project of their own. But when he went over and shook the cashbox, he found it empty. There were six jars that day (for some reason he counted), with three inches between each jar and their fronts perfectly aligned, the sample jar standing in front of them like their captain. The next day he walked down the driveway with three more jars-honey from last year's flow, but people knew the season was about to start and would be stopping by. This time he found four jars set apart from one another in two neat pairs, with the sample jar off by itself. "Looky here, an artiste," he said to Lissa, who was sniffing after something in the grass. Two jars sold, he supposed, only when he shook the cash box, he found that it was, once again, empty. “I take it back. Someone took them. Who would do that?" It wasn't a big deal, only six dollars and each year he gave away pounds of honey anyway. Probably the person had been out of cash and would bring the money by later. At the end of the day, though, he checked again-still nothing. Anyone who knew him would have left a note scrawled on the back of a napkin or old receipt-Hi B. IOU 6. No, this visitor had fiddled around with his jars, then taken two. That night, as he lay bored and hot in bed, he began, like Lissa with a good bone, to gnaw. It wasn't just a few missing jars that were the trouble; it was the state of things in general. You couldn't sell on an honor system anymore, not even out here. You had to wholesale to the supermarkets, but they'd only buy from Sue Bee, which mixed its honey in giant vats so the color would be the same bland shade in every jar. It was the economy, the pesticides, the land-use laws, yet the confusing thing was that it was nature, too, creatures so small you could barely see them, red specks the size of a pinhead, hairy shells with eight tenacious legs and jaws that could bring down the world. It was opening up a hive he'd thought might make it through the winter and finding it strewn like a war zone, dead bees everywhere, the green honey uncapped, bee carcasses drying out. Aristotle had placed bees higher than humans on a scale, believing that in bees the laws of nature were expressed far more perfectly and firmly. Burl had pondered that after he read it. Did it mean that the bees' ways were simply starker, less muddied, an engine aimed entirely at the survival of the group? He wasn’t sure, knew only that over the years he had found a deep pleasure, even a comfort, in his bees. He loved watching them in spring, seeing the field bees leave the hive and head into the fields, how they left empty and came back with their bellies full, their rear legs loaded up. He loved walking toward his bees on a July night and picking up the scent of nectar before he reached the hive. Inside, the bees were fanning water from the nectar. if he stood near enough, he could feel a draft play around his feet.