The Last Beekeeper


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Dedication
 Prologue
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 Two
 Three
 Four
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 Seven
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 Nine
 Ten
 Eleven
 Twelve
 Thirteen
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 Eighteen
 Nineteen
 Twenty
 Twenty-One
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 Twenty-Nine
 Thirty
 Thirty-One
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 Thirty-Four
 Thirty-Five
 Thirty-Six
 Thirty-Seven
 Thirty-Eight
 Thirty-Nine
 Forty
 Forty-One
 Forty-Two
 Forty-Three
 Forty-Four
 Forty-Five
 Acknowledgments
 Books by Julie Carrick Dalton
 About the Author
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Prologue
 One
 Acknowledgments
 Contents
 Copyright
 Start of content
 
 
 
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 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 About the Author
 Copyright Page
 
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 For my parents, Barbara and Ross Carrick.
 I have had the privilege of watching my mother and father excel in numerous endeavors, including puppeteering, belly dancing, driving an ambulance, selling real estate, cleaning houses, writing genealogy books, farming, and that super-secret thing we can’t talk about. You are the world’s best storytellers—and even better secret keepers. Thank you for filling my life with creativity, entrepreneurial energy, books, adventure, tea parties, mystery, love, and a lifetime supply of story ideas. I love you.
 
 
 
 Prologue
 SASHA, AGE 7
 
 AUGUST 11
 My bees will survive, Sasha promised herself as she crouched in the dirt watching them die. A worker bee hauled a dead sibling to the opening of the hive and launched the body onto a pile of her lifeless sisters in the dirt below.
 “Why are they dying?” Sasha whispered to her father, his head so close to hers his whiskers brushed her cheek.
 He rubbed his face with stiff, arthritic hands and crawled closer to the hive. “Come here.”
 He put a hand on the pine box. Sasha did the same.
 “What do you feel?” he asked.
 “Wood?” The smooth grain gave slightly under her fingernails as she pressed harder.
 “What else?”
 Warmth brewing inside the hive overpowered the shade cast by oak branches.
 “It’s hot. And buzzing.”
 “Bees hum at the exact pitch of a G note, like on Mom’s piano,” her father said, pipe smoke infused in his shirt mixing with lavender in the breeze.
 “How do they know the note?” She pressed her ear to the side of the hive, vibrations tickling the inner parts of her ear.
 “They just know. They communicate with signals only bees understand.”
 With her cheek still flush against the hive, Sasha looked at her father and blinked three slow, deliberate blinks, scrunching her eyes tight each time.
 “What are you doing?” he asked.
 “Sending a signal only you can understand.” Again, she stared at him and blinked three times.
 He furrowed his brow as if concentrating. “I love you, too.”
 Her father placed one hand on the hive and the other