Start to a Novel: The secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees

 The secret life of  bees buzzes all round my head on the back deck;  thousands of them hum their song to a beat that I don’t understand.   I stand there, listening, seeking my own rhythm to the buzz that is not of my rhythm.  I’m not afraid they will sting me for they are all about drilling little holes into my house and building their secret home within the wood structure of mine.  I can’t hate them for that, only they are destructive to the wooden layers of the house burrowing and eating their way in.  Making their hive full of a cone of delicate beemenship that is lost to my eyes yearning to see what wonder they have build within the external walls of my home.

 I lived here first, or second..  I just know that they are invasive and humming their song with such workers intent that I stand here amazed by the wonder of them.  We filled the trail of ten holes with caulk.  The hope was to move them out.  Get them to find another home, another place to give their honey and queen a place to do what  bees do. 

Oh, but no… they want this house.  they want access to the filled holes that cover their home and their queen.  They Must get back in..  The thousands of them; fraught, hysterically, humming, singularly intent;  beating at the caulking with one intention, to get back in.  They burrow a way back in through caulked filled holes before the morning arrives.  Filling their nests.

 I stand on the deck hearing the hum of the thousands of them that are back within our walls.  I sit here, by the open window writing this and I can hear them.   If I close my eyes I can feel the vibration of them.  It’s intense. Our barrier didn’t work.  I feel sad.  I don’t want to kill them.   It hurts my heart to  consider this.   There is no sitting on the deck with them, even tho’ they don’t try to sting us, they fly around our head with their every waking moment, hundreds of them…buzzing, brewing their life between the walls of the house.  My house.  Can we cohabitate?
  

Re: The secret Life of Bees

I like your writing style: The thousands of them;fraught, hysterically, humming, singularly intent;  beating at the caulking with one intention, to get back in.  This is very good, I have never read the book but for some reason I did not think it was about bees.  You got me curious as to where you are going from here.  I also like the innocence of the statement “it hurts my heart” it makes me love your character.


 

Re: Start to a Novel: The secret Life of Bees

Ah Breathh

I am just thinking what this book is going to be about… it tickles me. I sense that the bees will be a part of it all.

I am most curious about the -I- caracter and her family in this “novel to come”. I get really sympathetic feeling of them.
But what will this novel be about? That is the question.

I liked a lot the details of bees and their beemanship :) it was like I almost felt them myself when I read it and it made me hunch in my chair; any bees around?

Good start to a novel!

Re: Start to a Novel: The secret Life of Bees

I feel this I-character trying to seek out the rhythm of the bees, to find a common ground (so to speak) between their rhythm and her own, so she can have a better understanding of the situation and perhaps find a humane solution. I feel frustration on her part, and some resistance to the bees' presence, or maybe only sadness that the method they (the owners) had already tried to keep the bees out—the caulking and filling of holes—didn't work, and reluctance to take what I expect most would consider the next step (if not the first one)—to kill them.

I think my favourite line (besides the one Annie already mentioned) was this one:

There is no sitting on the deck with them, even tho’ they don’t try to sting us, they fly around our head with their every waking moment, hundreds of them…buzzing, brewing their life between the walls of the house.

I like that, brewing their life between the walls of the house. What a great way to put it.

My house. Can we cohabitate?

This being a novel (or the start of one), I half expect that the bees are there for at least a couple of hundred pages, if not forever. I am very much interested in finding out how the owners of this home (the human owners, I meant) deal with the situation.

Lovely beginning.

Ruth

BTW, I hope you don't mind, I corrected the formatting to make it easier to read (it seemed obviously a mismatch of the sort I get when I import from Word or similar word processor).

Re: Start to a Novel: The secret Life of Bees

I liked the sense of ”seeking my own rhythm to the buzz that is not of my rhythm”, in that it talks less about what we see, and more about what we feel, in the physical sense.  This is strengthened by the ”I can feel the vibration of them”, which asks the reader to close their eyes and imagine the vibration.

I was a little bit lost when it went straight into a literal description of bees, because the title, The Secret Life of Bees, instinctively led me to believe that the story would actually be about something that wasn't actually directly related to bees, but this could just be a residual effect of too much exposure to the movie trailers that I vaguely remember seeing on television.

For one brief moment, it occurred to me that this might be headed in the direction of a horror story (”The thousands of them; fraught, hysterically, humming, singularly intent”).  That description gave me echoes of the thousands of birds clouding the sky in Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds”, where the birds all insistenly and threatenly are diabolically intent on gaining entry to the house, so they can … well … you know the story.  Anyway, for a moment there I thought we were headed into “Oh, no, cover your eyes!” territory, but then it gets sentimental (It hurts my heart), so I kind of relax and wait to see what happens next.

For a minute there, you scared me.  Thought I was going to have to run for cover!