![]() ![]() My heart raced with them, frightened and awestruck at the same time. ![]() We stepped into a mini-cyclone of bees, a roaring inkblot in the sky, banking left and right like a flock of birds. He leaned his shoulder into his jammed door and creaked it open with a grunt. Grandpa careened into the tennis club and squealed to a stop near a cattle fence. We had to hurry to catch the swarm because the bees might get an idea to fly off somewhere else. He whizzed past the speed limit, which I knew from riding with Granny said to go twenty-five. The engine finally caught and we screeched out of the driveway, kicking up a spray of gravel behind us. ![]() As I climbed into the passenger seat of his rickety pickup, he tapped the gas pedal to coax it to life. This time the call came from the private tennis ranch about a mile away on Carmel Valley Road. He slugged back his coffee in one gulp and wiped his mustache with the back of his arm. I was ten, and had been catching swarms with him for almost half my life, so I knew what was coming next. I was pouring Grandpa’s honey over my corn bread when he came out of the kitchen with that sly smile that said we’d have to let our breakfast go cold again. The red rotary phone jangled to life every spring with frantic callers reporting honeybees in their walls, or in their chimneys, or in their trees. Swarm season always arrived by telephone. ![]()
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