> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://verse.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Beekeeper’s Letter - URL: https://verse.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/the-beekeepers-letter/ - Published: 2026-08-23T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-23T08:00:00.000Z - Description: The letter arrived eleven years after it was written, which was entirely typical of her grandmother. - Author: Helena Marsh - Tags: Short Stories, #Import 2026-09-30 17:08 The letter arrived eleven years after it was written, which was, in Lise's opinion, entirely typical of her grandmother. It came in a brown envelope from a solicitor in a town she had never heard of, with a short covering note. *Found among the papers of the late Mrs. Hanne Vik, to be delivered to her granddaughter on the occasion of her thirtieth birthday.* Lise had turned thirty on Tuesday. The letter came on Friday. Her grandmother had been dead for eleven years. She opened it at the kitchen table, standing up, as if it might need her to leave in a hurry. ![Four pages in a hand that had not changed since school.](https://verse.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/bee-letter.jpg) Four pages in a hand that had not changed since school. --- *Dear Lise,* *If you are reading this, you are thirty and I am not anywhere, which I expect you have got used to. I hope you are well. I hope you have not become a lawyer. Your mother wanted you to be a lawyer when you were six and I have been worried ever since.* *I am writing because there is something I did not tell you when you were small, because you were small, and something I could not tell you at nineteen, because you were nineteen and knew everything. At thirty, you may be ready to be told something by an old woman. We will see.* *You will remember the bees.* Lise sat down. She remembered the bees. Every summer until she was twelve, she had been sent to her grandmother's farm on the island, and every summer she had followed the old woman out to the hives at the bottom of the meadow in a veil and gloves too big for her. Seven hives, painted seven colours. Her grandmother talked to them. Lise had thought it was a game. *The bees must be told,* the letter went on. *That is the old rule. When there is a birth, a death, a marriage, a person going away, you go down to the hives and you tell them, quietly, and you knock three times on each one. If you forget, they leave. Or they die. That is what my grandmother taught me and I did not believe it either.* *But I told them everything. For sixty years. I told them when your grandfather died. I told them when your mother was born and when she left the island and did not come back. I told them the day you were born, which was a Thursday in April, very windy, and I had to hold the lids on. I told them about you every summer. Your first word was "honey", did you know? No. You said it to them, not to me.* ![The meadow below the farm in July, full of the flowers they came for.](https://verse.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/bee-field.jpg) The meadow below the farm in July, full of the flowers they came for. --- *Now I have to tell you something, and then I have to ask you something.* *The thing I have to tell you is that the farm is yours. Not your mother's. Yours. I did it properly, with the solicitor, who is a nervous young man and has been told to wait until you are thirty, because I did not want you to have to decide anything at nineteen. You may sell it. I would understand. It is a long way from anywhere and the roof leaks over the back bedroom.* *The thing I have to ask is this. Whatever you decide, go down to the hives first. There will still be bees; I have arranged it with a neighbour, the Dahl boy, who is patient and does not talk much. Go down in the evening, when they are home. Knock three times on each hive. And tell them I have gone.* *I know. It has been eleven years. That is exactly why. I could not tell them myself, and nobody else knew to. They have been waiting all this time for somebody to say it. I think they will be very glad it is you.* > The bees must be told. Not because they will understand, but because we need to say it somewhere that is listening. > > **Hanne Vik** *Tell them the rest as well. Everything that has happened to you. Take your time. They are good at waiting.* *With all my love, and some honey, which is in the cellar, labelled, and should still be good, because honey keeps forever. Most things do, if you store them properly.* *Mormor.* --- The ferry to the island ran twice a day. Lise took the afternoon one. The Dahl boy, who turned out to be a man of about forty with a grey beard and very steady hands, met her at the jetty and drove her up to the farm without asking a single question, and at the gate he gave her a veil and a pair of gloves, which fitted. She walked down to the hives as the sun was going. There were seven, painted seven colours, the paint peeling. The air above them was loud and gold. She knocked three times on the first one. Her hand was shaking. "She's gone," she said. "I'm sorry nobody told you." And then, because the bees were listening and it was evening and there was nobody else on the whole island to hear, she kept talking, and did not stop until it was dark.