The Bear and the Beehive

Bruno had been watching the beehive for exactly three weeks.

He'd found it on a Tuesday — a big, golden, papery hive hanging from the lowest branch of the old oak tree at the edge of Clover Meadow. He'd been walking home from the river with a trout in his belly and a song in his heart when he smelled it. Honey. Sweet, thick, magnificent honey. The kind of smell that grabs a bear by the nose and doesn't let go.

"Oh my," Bruno whispered, hiding behind a bush. "Oh my, oh my, oh my."

He almost ran straight for it right then and there. But Bruno was not like other bears. Other bears would just waddle up to a beehive and stick their whole face in it and get stung four hundred times and not even care.

Not Bruno. Bruno was a planner.

He went home to his cave that very night and pulled out a big piece of birch bark and a piece of charcoal, and he started to draw diagrams.

"Day One," he wrote at the top. "Observation."

During the first week, Bruno hid behind the same bush every single day and watched the bees. He noticed that they left the hive each morning when the sun hit the oak tree. He noticed they flew mostly toward the wildflower field to the south. He noticed that around lunchtime, fewer bees guarded the entrance.

He wrote it all down. He drew little maps with arrows. He made a chart of bee activity by time of day. He was very proud of that chart.

"This," Bruno said, tapping it with one big claw, "is what separates me from the ordinary bear."

During the second week, Bruno prepared his equipment. He wove a basket from river reeds to carry the honeycomb home. He found a wide, flat piece of bark to use as a fan — he'd heard somewhere (well, a badger had told him) that smoke makes bees sleepy, so he planned to wave smoky air toward the hive. He even practiced running, in case things went wrong.

He did not run very fast. He was a bear. But he practiced anyway.

He also made himself a hat out of big maple leaves and stuck them together with pine sap. It looked ridiculous, but it covered his ears, and Bruno was particularly concerned about getting stung on the ears.

"No one," he announced to a confused-looking squirrel, "has ever planned a honey operation this thoroughly."

The squirrel blinked at him and scurried away.

During the third week, Bruno chose his day: Thursday. He chose his time: 12:15, right when the lunchtime bee-gap was at its widest. He rehearsed the whole thing six times. Walk to the tree. Fan the smoke. Reach up. Grab the comb. Put it in the basket. Walk home. Eat honey until Tuesday.

It was a perfect plan.

Now, what Bruno did not know — because he was very busy planning and charting and making leaf hats — was that the bees had also noticed him.

"There's a bear behind that bush again," said a bee named Marguerite on Day One.

"Same bear," said a bee named Olive on Day Four. "He's writing something."

"He's got a chart," said a bee named Dotty on Day Nine. "I flew close enough to see it. It's about us."

The bees held a meeting. Two thousand bees fit inside that hive, and every single one of them attended.

"A bear with a chart is a bear with a plan," said Marguerite, who was the oldest and wisest bee. "And a bear with a plan is going to try for our honey."

"What do we do?" asked Olive.

"Simple," said Marguerite. "We make a plan too."

And so, while Bruno was weaving his basket and making his leaf hat and practicing his running, the bees were planning something of their own.

Thursday came. The sun was bright. The sky was blue. Bruno put on his leaf hat, picked up his bark fan, grabbed his basket, and marched toward the old oak tree at exactly 12:15.

His heart was pounding. His paws were sweating. This was the moment. Three weeks of planning, all coming together.

He crept up to the tree. He pulled out a small bundle of dried moss he'd prepared and struck two rocks together until it began to smoke. He fanned the smoke toward the hive with his bark fan.

"Sleepy time, bees," he whispered. "Nighty night."

He waited one minute. Two minutes. Everything seemed quiet. Bruno smiled the biggest smile a bear has ever smiled.

He reached up with both paws, standing on his tiptoes, stretching toward the beautiful golden hive —

And the hive was light.

Too light.

Bruno pulled it down and looked inside.

It was completely empty. No bees. No honeycomb. No honey. Just papery walls and the faint smell of something sweet that used to be there.

"What?" Bruno said. "What?"

He turned the hive upside down and shook it. Nothing. He stuck his whole head inside. Nothing. He looked up at the branch where it had been hanging, as if maybe the honey had stayed behind.

Nothing.

Bruno sat down on the ground with a thump.

"But — but my chart," he sputtered. "My basket. My — my leaf hat!"

And then he heard it.

Buzzing. Not from the old oak tree. From behind him.

Bruno turned around slowly.

There, across the meadow, at the top of a very tall pine tree — a tree with no low branches, a tree so tall that even a bear standing on his tiptoes on another bear's shoulders couldn't reach — was a brand new beehive. Bigger than the old one. Golden and glowing in the afternoon sun.

Two thousand bees buzzed happily around it.

And on a low branch of that tall pine, close enough for Bruno to see, sat Marguerite, Olive, and Dotty. They looked right at him.

Marguerite did a little loop in the air. If Bruno didn't know better, he'd say she was waving.

Bruno sat in the meadow for a long time. He sat there with his empty basket and his silly leaf hat and his perfectly useless chart, and he stared up at the new hive in that impossibly tall tree.

Then something surprising happened.

Bruno laughed.

It started as a little rumble in his belly, and then it rolled up through his chest and came out in a big, booming bear laugh that echoed across Clover Meadow.

"They out-planned me!" he said, wiping a tear from his eye. "The bees out-planned me!"

He laughed until his sides hurt. He laughed until he fell over backward into the clover. He laughed until a rabbit poked its head out of a hole to see what all the noise was about.

When he finally stopped laughing, Bruno lay in the clover looking up at the sky, and he said, "Well. Fair enough."

He picked up his basket and his bark fan and his maple-leaf hat, and he walked home through the golden afternoon light. On the way, he passed a bramble bush loaded with ripe blackberries. He'd walked past this bush every day for three weeks and never once looked at it, because his mind had been so full of honey.

He stopped. He picked a blackberry and popped it in his mouth.

It was sweet. Really sweet, actually. Juice ran down his chin and into his fur.

He picked another. And another. He filled his entire reed basket to the brim with fat, dark, juicy blackberries, and not a single one of them stung him on the ears.

That evening, Bruno sat outside his cave with a basket of blackberries and a full belly, watching the sun go down. He still had his leaf hat on. He'd forgotten about it.

Somewhere across the meadow, two thousand bees were settling in for the night in their brand new hive at the top of a very tall tree.

And if you listened closely — very, very closely — you might have heard a bear chuckling softly to himself as the first stars came out.

"Fair enough," he said one more time.

Then he ate one last blackberry and went to bed.