Harlan Petrie, the retired beekeeper Caleb met at the feed store, was the first person to take his curiosity seriously. Harlan had hands bent by arthritis and a face reddened by years of weather, and he spent most mornings at a table near the store's front window drinking coffee that tasted, by his own account, like hot roofing tar. Caleb came in looking for fence staples and stayed after hearing Harlan mention honeybees to the cashier. He waited until the older man finished before asking whether a hive could die even when honey remained inside it.
Harlan lowered his paper cup. "Sure can. Why?"
"I found old boxes with comb in them. Some had honey left. I thought bees only starved when they ran out."
"There's a lot more ways for a colony to die than running out of food," Harlan said. "Mites, disease, a queen that quits. Too much moisture, poor food, not enough healthy young bees going into winter. Sometimes a mixture of troubles you can't separate afterward. You thinking about starting?"
"Maybe," Caleb said.
"Then don't put living bees on somebody else's old comb just because somebody gave it to you for free." Harlan's voice had grown serious. "You can salvage lumber. You can't bargain with disease. And don't believe anyone who tells you every empty hive means the same thing."
For nearly an hour Harlan talked, testing Caleb with questions, correcting his assumptions, describing the nights he had lain awake wondering whether wind had toppled a lid and drowned a colony with cold rain. Caleb took notes on the back of a feed invoice when the spiral notebook in his pocket filled. He had expected an older man to mock him for his interest in discarded boxes. Instead, Harlan gave him a name.
"You want somebody who can tell you which mistakes are expensive and which ones kill bees? Go see Walt Iverson. Seventy-four years old, lives out past the lilac hedge on the east road. He used to manage close to two hundred colonies. Tell him I sent you, and don't waste his time pretending you know things you don't."
At home Caleb wrote WALT IVERSON in block letters on a fresh page. Under it he listed sixteen questions, crossed out four that seemed too obvious, then wrote them back because he realized he genuinely didn't know the answers. At the top he wrote one sentence in heavy pencil: CAN A PLACE THAT LOST ITS BEES GET THEM BACK? He stared at it before closing the book, embarrassed by how large the question sounded when set beside the practical concerns of keeping equipment dry and feeding a family.
A few days later he went to the Reyes farm. Luis and Elena Reyes had stopped keeping honeybees after losing three colonies in a difficult season. They remembered empty hives, a queen left with a small patch of brood and very few workers, and the strange absence of the foragers that had once crowded the entrance. The extension specialist had discussed colony collapse disorder with them, while also making clear that not every dwindling colony fit that particular pattern and that modern honeybee losses frequently involved interacting causes.