Free Trauma Farm by Brian Brett

protecting the dead, willow nurtures the infertile, and sterile women lay branches in their beds. Willow is about as multipurpose as you can get.
    Beyond the willows, amid the orchard, are the farm’s two hives, and the bees are making their first forays into the day as the sun warms the hives.

    “ THEY ’RE SINGING THE QUEENLESS song,” the old beekeeper said. A tall, thin man who doesn’t appreciate fools, he’s known by islanders as the “honeyman” of Fulford Road. Once, he was a mathematics teacher, but the bees snatched him. These days he’s a swarm of advice, educated in many things, and his knowledge makes him cranky on occasion. I go to him for instruction. After he’s finished lecturing me about the failures of my generation, the secrets spill out— he’s generous despite himself as he tells the stories of a lifetime among insects. They’ve spoken to him for so many years I think he’s become ashamed of his own species.
    My initial hive was troubled. Even an amateur like me knew it, so I stuffed the entrances with foam and bound it with the bungee cords he’d given me, humped the hive onto my pickup, and drove it to his cluttered yard. As soon as I dropped the tailgate and we stood listening, he knew she was gone. A hive is always talking to itself. This one was humming grief. There was no queen, and all the larval cells were too old to convert into a queen—the hive was doomed, its last survivors wandering mournfully on the empty combs without purpose. A sick hive can even smell different. The odour of the combs, their colour, and their density constantly vary—red, thick and blackish, pale and fluid, or even crystallized like sweet amber. Resting my hand on the lid, I felt a low, sad thrumming. A healthy hive is aggressive if disturbed, and a couple of guard bees will immediately leap into the air. If I bang the hive an angry mob will kamikaze toward me.
    When a bee stings, the exquisitely designed barb, its tip composed of two lancets jabbing alternately, sucks itself under the skin until the apparatus snaps off at a breakaway point and remains in the flesh, venom sac attached, shouting an olfactory war cry, as the bee stumbles off and dies, self-eviscerated. The released scent of the sting directs new warriors to the ambush site. Meanwhile, after seven minutes the venom sac reactivates and pumps in another shot. I’ve watched this often; the intestines act like a thinking organism.
    When I approach a hive, even if the advance guards do not sting they will seize me with their mandibles and dab me with a volatile odour that will lure other guards, who will decide if I am worthy of the sacrifice, since every sting means suicide. Only the queen can sting repeatedly. Bee venom is a miraculous substance, composed of seventy-six chemicals, which interrelate in a way that amplifies their effects—a tiny stinger slightly thicker than a pin can kill people with sensitive immune systems.
    “Deadly poisons,” according to Ovid, “are concealed under sweet honey.” But a poison is only a medicine delivered in the wrong dose. Bee venom has been used for centuries to treat diseases like arthritis and, more recently, multiple sclerosis. Some api-therapists have suggested that acupuncture originated from studying the effects of bee stings on various parts of the body. I have a neighbour afflicted with ms. Every two days his wife uses tweezers to place live bees on the key acupuncture points of his spine. He showed me his back once—symmetrically inflamed by the healing stings. Paralyzed down one side when the disease first struck, he now fast-walks past my gate every morning, with only a slight numbness remaining in two fingers. The effects of bee-sting therapy vary wildly, and the disease can return. Others report that it merely helped them wiggle their toes. For someone with ms that is encouraging news. Hope is huge in the world.
    What first drew me to the bees was my arthritis. I stung myself for