Each spring, I know the flowers are sweetest when I hear the sound of bees. It is an inimitable sound, or, rather, a feeling. I’ll step outside and, a first faintly, then in crashing waves of sound, familiar buzzing will fill my ears, my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and I’ll know that spring has arrived. My body shivers with the hum of bees; the sweet honey sound is medicine to my sore muscles.
My mother picks flowers in the spring, arranging bouquets of daffodils and bluebells and honey-yellow roses. I can smell the bees when I breathe in the sweet scent of fresh-cut flowers, and buzzing fills my mind as I take another breath. Bees come with the sun, but they don’t leave with the rain. That’s my job, you see. When the clouds dry up and move on from my backyard, I begin my hunt. Pools of rainwater, oceans to one so small as a bee, are sticky like a spiderweb and sweet like the nectar of the flowers planted the mulch around the stream. Bees become stuck, bogged down by the reflective liquid. It is my job to save them. My hands are accustomed to stings and bites from bees, but I scoop each one up indiscriminately and without fear. No matter how many times I get stung, I am still the bee-whisperer.
Rowan Dobranski's Blog 