His father nodded toward the notebook sticking out of Caleb's jacket. "Then listen when the old fellow tells you something you don't want to hear. A lesson costs less when you pay attention the first time."
Caleb remembered that advice the following Saturday when he drove down the east road past a row of lilac bushes and knocked on the door of a house surrounded by rusting smokers, empty hive stands and old agricultural equipment. Walt Iverson answered in a faded red shirt with his reading glasses hanging from a cord. He looked at the notebook under Caleb's arm, then at the young face above it, and frowned with the efficient suspicion of a man who preferred truth to pleasant conversation.
"Harlan sent you?" Walt asked.
"Yes, sir."
"What do you want?"
Caleb swallowed. "I want to know if it's possible to bring a dead-out hive back into use with bees from a healthy colony, and how to tell whether the old equipment is safe."
Walt held his gaze. Then the older man's eyes moved once toward the notebook and softened by an amount so small most people would not have noticed it. "Depends on what killed it," he said. "Come inside."
Caleb stepped through the doorway without knowing that he was walking into the most demanding education of his young life. He thought Walt might answer a few questions and send him home with a list of repairs. He did not know the old man was about to challenge nearly every assumption in his notebook, nor that their unlikely friendship would eventually matter to the valley more than the first load of abandoned equipment in his father's truck. For the moment there was only the smell of coffee, the ticking of a kitchen clock, and an old beekeeper pulling out a chair as though the question Caleb had brought deserved all the time it required.
Walt's kitchen held almost no decoration. There was a clock above the stove, a calendar from the grain elevator, and photographs of a younger man in a white beekeeping suit standing beside long rows of boxes beneath a wide summer sky. One picture showed a woman laughing as bees clustered around the rim of her veil. Caleb looked at it while Walt filled two cups and set a small jar of honey on the table, then thought better of asking whether the woman was Walt's wife.
"Start at the beginning," Walt said. "Tell me what you think a hive is."
"A wooden box where bees live."
"That's the equipment. I asked what a hive is."
Caleb paused. "A colony. A queen, workers, brood, stored food, and somewhere to raise more bees."
"Better. A colony's a living system. The box is housing. Folks confuse those things and then wonder why buying new housing doesn't cure a sick family." Walt folded his hands. "Now tell me why a colony might die while there's still honey in the frames."