Queen Leah Hampton (bio) In her memory, the hive sat in the side yard, echoing family rituals and routines. Summer mornings, workers would swarm the basil plant on the porch. They bothered no one—not even Dale, whose deck chair always sat close by. Maisy could scarcely think of when she had ever been stung on her mother’s property. So familiar were the movements and flight paths of all participants that it never occurred to anyone to disturb each [End Page 95] other. The spread of acres kept them all satisfied to amble their own way, and making room for others rarely interrupted anyone’s foraging. So when Dale texted her about the half empty hive and the carnage littering the hydrangea bushes, Maisy left work early, pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and barreled down Highway 23 to her mother’s house. She arrived to find Dale upright and between beers. His face was puffy as usual, his skin splotched red and brown from six decades of abandoned anger. He nodded gently and tugged his baseball cap as Maisy pulled up, then went back to working on the lawn. “Are they all dead?” She called out as she slammed her car door. Maisy edged towards Dale, but she made sure to stay close to the house. She didn’t want to look for herself. “Where’s the queen?” Dale shrugged, killed the weed whacker, and staked it into the ground like a ski pole. He didn’t know anything about bees. Dale hadn’t been around yet when they brought the hive home years before, and it was one of the few things he didn’t look after here. He said he didn’t like to mess with a body that didn’t mess with him. In return, the bees left him alone when he dozed near their favorite spot on the porch. Dale’s drunken fogs were protracted, but largely harmless. The bees seemed to respect, even admire, the depth of his hazes. She asked after her mother, and Dale shrugged again, this time more with more resolve. “She’s still in that damn jar, Maisy,” he muttered, “Right where you left her.” He spat into the grass and sighed heavily through his nose. A brief coldness passed through her gut. “All right, Dale,” she breathed. “Let me go see what I can figure out.” Dale looked out towards the road and rubbed the dirt from his hands onto his T-shirt. His fingers were thick and calloused. “What the hell,” he rattled as Maisy eased past him. [End Page 96] “I’m not gonna scatter her in the bushes. You want her, take it home with you.” She squinted hard, reminded herself to be patient, and trudged up to the house. For all ten years they were together, Dale had made breakfast for Maisy’s mother every morning. When the cancer took her appetite, he brought her green tea instead and waited patiently as she agonized over each sip, all the while aching to get downstairs and have his own first drink of the day. Through all that, and even now after her mother’s passing, Dale still kept the lawn mowed, still fixed the pipes when they dripped. He knew it wasn’t his house, so Maisy let him stay on for now. It was easier than keeping up two houses by herself. She figured he’d move on soon, maybe go live with his ex-wife in Sevierville. In the meantime, she tried to remind herself that she would be lucky to find a man so devoted, drink or no drink, someday when her own children left her. She paused on the porch to move Dale’s cooler off the top step, then went inside to find the apiary handbook. Maisy didn’t know anything about bees, either, not really. What little she remembered she had learned only by watching her mother, who rarely talked of how or why with any of her garden work. Even those few scraps of knowing were long distant acquisitions, all earned over a decade ago. When her kids were still little, Maisy had moved back home for...