Ronan O’Malley, 57, third-generation beekeeper outside Asheville, North Carolina, has carried a petty, burning grudge against the county agricultural department for eight years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a senior inspector who’d written him up for three unregistered hive boxes once. He’s skipped the annual WNC Honey Festival every year since the split, only agreeing to man his booth this year when his part-time sales lead called in sick with a brutal sinus infection, muttering the whole drive over that he’d rather be stung by a hundred yellow jackets than make small talk with strangers.
The booth next to his is run by Elara Voss, 49, the new county apiarist specialist hired six months prior, with a scar slashing across her left knuckle from a run-in with an aggressive hive earlier that spring. She wears worn Carhartt overalls over a faded Johnny Cash tee, work boots caked in red clay from a site visit that morning, and her auburn hair is pulled into a loose braid streaked with silver at the temples. Fifteen minutes after setup, a jar of his limited-edition sourwood honey rolls off the edge of his table, and she leans across the three feet of space between their booths to grab it before it shatters on the asphalt, her forearm brushing his as she passes it over. He smells cedar soap, wild clover, and the faint, sweet tang of beeswax lip balm, and he tenses up immediately, ready to brush her off, until she says, “This is the good stuff. I’ve been feeding a diluted batch to the hives out in Cane Creek that got hit by that glyphosate drift last month. They’re bouncing back faster than the ones on store-bought syrup.”
He’s surprised. Most county staff he’s interacted with over the last decade only care about writing citations, not hands-on fixes for the industrial pesticide issues wiping out half the region’s hives. They banter back and forth between customer stops over the next four hours, the hum of the festival crowd mixing with the soft buzz of the observation hive on her booth table. She teases him about his permanent scowl scaring off families who want to buy kid-sized honey sticks, he teases her about the fact her booth’s display of native bee houses is lopsided, held together with nothing but neon green duct tape. Their hands brush three more times that afternoon: once when they both reach for a stack of disposable sample cups stacked between their tables, once when she passes him a cold peach popsicle from her cooler after he complains the festival’s lemonade is so watered down it tastes like tap water, once when he helps her lift a 40-pound crate of bee house supplies off the sun-warmed asphalt. Each time, his skin prickles, and he berates himself for being an idiot, for even entertaining the thought of being attracted to anyone who works for the same department that employed the guy who blew up his marriage. He cycles between wanting to pack up early and bolt for his farm, and wanting to stretch the day out as long as he possibly can.
The festival wraps at 6 p.m., right as a wall of dark thunderclouds rolls over the Blue Ridge Mountains. They’re both folding up their table cloths when the sky opens up, rain pouring down so hard it stings exposed skin. A stack of his unboxed honey jars teeters on the edge of the table, and they both lunge for it at the same time, grabbing as many as they can carry to dash 20 yards to the awning of the nearby community center. They’re both soaked through, rain dripping off the brim of his worn Red Sox baseball cap, her braid coming undone, wet strands sticking to her neck and the collar of her tee. She’s laughing, breathless, holding three jars of wildflower honey pressed to her chest, and she says, “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to reach out to you for months. All the old timers say you’re the best beekeeper in the county, but everyone warned me you hated county staff.”
He huffs, wipes rain off his cheek with the back of his hand, and admits he’s been an idiot, holding a grudge against a whole department for one guy’s selfish choices. He admits this is the first time he’s enjoyed talking to someone in years, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to not have to pretend he was fine being alone all the time.
He asks her if she wants to follow him back to his apiary, he’s got a dry flannel shirt she can borrow, and a jar of 12-year-old sourwood honey he’s been saving for no reason he could name till now, plus he can show her the small test hive he’s been raising that’s fully resistant to varroa mites. She grins, squeezes his wrist, her cold, rain-wet hand warm against his skin, and says she’d love to, as long as he promises not to hold her job title against her.
They load their gear into his dented 2008 Ford F-150, the rain tapping steady on the roof, the scent of wet pine and raw honey filling the cab. He turns the key in the ignition, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel a twist of dread in his gut when he thinks about driving back to his quiet, once-empty farm.
