The empty super

Fiction. This keeper is not staff. This hive is made up.

April in Orlando is a argument between citrus and rain.

The keeper came in the morning, before the heat, with a box that smelled of wood and old wax. No name on the lid. A person in a veil, moving the way people move when they do not want to be stung and also do not want to look afraid.

From the bees' side the sky opened.

That is what a super is, at first. A roof that lifts. A blast of light. The smell of the colony going out into the yard, and the yard coming in. Guards boiled at the notch. Foragers returning from a lime hit a board that was not where the board had been.

The keeper did not explain. There is no explaining to a hive. There is smoke, which is a lie about fire, and there are hands, which are large and wrong, and then there is a new box of drawn comb stacked on the old boxes, empty cells like rooms nobody has claimed.

The lid came back down. The sky closed. The colony had a new attic.

Nurses climbed first. They always do. They walk the new wax and decide if it smells like home. Drawn comb from last year still holds a ghost of honey and brood. That helps. Foundation without history takes longer. This comb had history. The nurses began to polish it, which is not housework. It is a claim.

A scout returning from Lake Eola's edge, from a lot of Bidens, from wherever the morning had sent her, danced on the old comb because that is where the floor was. The new box sat above like a rumor. Foragers unloaded downstairs. The queen stayed on her eggs, which were not in the attic. She would go up when the workers told her the attic was real, and they would tell her by occupying it.

From the person's side it was a spring chore.

The hive had been heavy. Capped honey in the upper frames. Brood packed tight. A colony that runs out of room in April will make queen cells and leave, which in a city lot is a swarm in a cabbage palm and a week of explaining to neighbors. The keeper added space because space is cheaper than a swarm. A person learns that by losing a hive once.

The keeper stood back. Veil off. Sweat already, I-4 heat arriving early. A saucer of water by the stand, because last year the bees had gone to the pool. The screened porch next door held a cat that did not care.

Inside, by afternoon, the attic had traffic.

Not full. Not even close. A few nurses. A few stores moved up, a cell here, a cell there, as if the colony were testing whether the new rooms would still be there tomorrow. Bees do not trust a gift. They occupy it until it stops being a gift and starts being theirs.

Rain came at three, the usual wall. The keeper had already gone inside. The colony packed down, then up again when the steam lifted off the sand.

A week later the empty super was not empty. Nectar in the new frames. A scatter of pollen. The queen had not moved up yet. She did not need to. The workers were using the room the way a city uses a new road: slowly, then all at once.

The keeper would check on a Saturday, mutter something to nobody, and leave the box where it was.

The bees would keep filling it.

That is the whole story of spring space. A person guesses at the future. A hive walks into the guess and either uses it or leaves. This hive used it. The lime kept blooming. The attic kept taking what the foragers brought. Nobody clapped. The work just had more rooms.