"Then you'll learn from what happened. But you can't lose them in November by worrying hard enough about February."
The answer was honest and therefore less comforting than Caleb wanted it to be. He went home with numb fingers and made a final winter summary in his notebook, recording the condition of all fifteen colonies and the decisions he had made for each. He put the notebook beside his bed, where he could reach it without turning on the light. The empty space where next spring's notes would go looked larger than it should have.
December came with a series of freezing nights that turned the fence wire white with frost. Snow accumulated along the shed wall and drifted against one side of the hive stands. Caleb brushed entrances clear when needed without disturbing the clusters inside, checked that no lids had shifted and listened carefully on suitable days. Some visits produced a faint low sound through the wood. Others produced nothing he could confidently interpret, which frightened him more.
On Christmas morning he finished feeding the cattle and walked out to the apiary before the family opened presents. The air was so cold that his breath made a pale cloud around his face. Snow lay in a smooth sheet between the stands, broken only by the dark lines of his previous footsteps. He crouched beside one colony and put a gloved hand against the side of the box, not expecting to learn much from it but wanting, irrationally, to let the bees know he had not forgotten them.
Thomas found him there a few minutes later. He wore an old canvas coat and carried a mug of coffee that was steaming in the cold. For a while he stood beside his son without speaking. Then he looked over the rows.
"How many do you figure will make it?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"What's Walt say?"
"He says we've done what we can. Some years he lost colonies even when he thought he'd done everything right."
Thomas handed him the coffee. "Then maybe that's the lesson, son. Sometimes hard work buys you a chance, not a promise. Come inside before your mother decides we've both frozen to death."
They walked back together, leaving the hives silent under the snow. It was the first winter in Caleb's life that had felt as if something important was happening while he was powerless to watch it. Every day the bees consumed food, maintained their cluster and carried the future of the colony inside an ordinary wooden box. His own impatience could not speed the season.
January brought an ice storm that closed school for two days. Branches bent over the county road and one of the old apple trees near the Voss lane lost a heavy limb. Caleb worried about the hive lids beneath the trees and went out with Thomas after the wind settled to check the stands. Everything had held, except for one loose sheet of roofing material stored behind the shed that had blown across the yard. The bees were still tucked away, and the sight of the equipment standing where he had left it was enough to let him breathe more easily for a while.