A gentle spring breeze blew through a red clover covered yard, filling the early morning air with the smell of honey as an exceedingly tall langstroth hive towered over the surrounding greenery. Gentle puffs of pine smoke emanating from his smoker, Apis lifted the cover to the enormous hive as the smoke pacified the buzzing bees around him. The Carniolan bees always needed a little smoke to prevent unnecessary stings.

Despite needing a step stool to reach the top of the hive, Apis was by no means short. Instead the hive measured at least 8 feet tall, with more honey supers than any hive should need. But he stubbornly refused to split the hive. After all, this large hive has produced more honey than five regular sized hives.

“Hello my lil ladies! Time to start taking this bad boy apart, then.”

Grunting with exertion, Apis removed the supers, heavy with honey and wax, one by one. After carefully setting aside each one, making sure to not kill any bees in the process, Apis eventually reached the deep boxes at the bottom of the hive. Then he spent minutes carefully combing through each frame in search of his prized queen.

“There’s the red dot, it’s good to see you’re still healthy after four years of hard work. I’m going to have to find a replacement soon, at best you have another year or three in you.”

Queen bees easily live 10 times longer than their worker counterparts. But even the best and most cared for queen won’t live anything longer than a fraction of a human’s life.

By the second year of starting his hive, Apis had decided upon a name for the queen, Queen Salvo. Queen Salvo was given her name for no particular reason besides the fact that she was large and artillery shaped supposedly.

After removing some of the filled frames, brushing the bees off, and replacing them with empty frames, Apis reconstructed the hive while using a steady stream of smoke to keep the bees pacified. While hauling away almost 100 pounds of honey filled frames, an unknown package was delivered to his doorstep. Placing the frames in storage to be processed later tonight, Apis headed straight towards the package.

The package was no bigger than a shoebox and when shaken a sound similar to a book sliding and hitting the walls were heard. Clearly this person didn’t know how to use bubble wrap.

“Huh? No return address, that’s strange.”

Mumbling to himself, Apis took the package inside and opened it up with his hive tool. Causing the edges of the opening to be covered in a layer of honey. Inside was a folded letter with small tears throughout and a small, worn notebook that ballooned in size from repeated opening of the pages.

Opening the letter, large bulbous penmanship greeted him. The small tears throughout the letter turned out to be due to heavy usage of an eraser. Giving the once pristine, white paper a dull gray sheen, especially around the body of the letter.

Dear Apis,

This is Dr. Avem. My apologies for not replying to your package of honey comb sooner. My wife said it was some of the best clover honey she’s ever had! Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know since not only is she built like a bear but she eats like one too.

“Miss Elizabeth must’ve not read this letter, otherwise there’d be blood all over the page.”

As much as I wish to catch up, I’m preoccupied with my experiments in South America. As difficult as it is to explain, I’ll try to be brief.

To start, there have been case after case of animal attacks on the edges of human civilization in the Amazon rainforest. Which while it isn’t unheard of, there is something amiss.

Humans typically have more control over their strength, which is why we tend to be weaker than our primate counterparts. However! No matter how much weaker we are, the primates' strength is still within reasonable limits.

But what’s happening now is—fueled by what we’re calling qi. The captured—strong enough to leave claw marks in steel! Already—died. We’ve lost many good men.

“This bird brain of a professor, couldn’t you at least have the foresight to rewrite on a clean piece of paper. I can barely make out what’s written and your blobfish-like handwriting doesn’t help.”

I’ve left—in the notebook. If I don’t make it I want my research to—a clue to this puzzle. Please whatever you do, don’t—my experiments.

I’m worried the end of days are upon us.

“What a worrywart, even if the animals are stronger and more aggressive than they should be, it doesn’t matter. These animals could just be roided out lab experiments released into the wild. There’s always bigger shoulders for this to fall on. No need to act like you’ve looked death in the eye and lost hope.”

Anyways I’ve rambled on long enough, it seems even without you in my class keeping me off topic, I’ll still choose to ramble on.

I hope you continue doing well in all your pursuits. Also please send my wife more honey! As they say, a happy wife, a happy life.

Sincerely,

Your henpecked professor

“I see some things never change.”

Gently folding the letter back, Apis grabbed the edges of the box and reached in for the small notebook. Flipping through the pages randomly, a diagram of multiple geometric shapes inside of a circle caught his attention.

Caressing the diagram in curiosity, suddenly the page got stuck to his finger and tore.

“How worn out are these pages!”

Unsticking the page from his finger, Apis was shocked to find the diagram was no more. Almost as if his eyes played tricks on him. Instead, the page had a simple honey hued color—different from all the others—and his thumbprint was now outlined in honey on the page.

A thorough examination later and still no sign of the diagram on the page nor anywhere else in the notebook. Perplexed, Apis stopped worrying about it.

“Oh man, it’s already past noon. I guess I was too absorbed in the notebook.”

Preparing a simple lunch, he soon turned on the tv and dozed off as he ate. The honey hued page faintly glowed. His breathing slowly grew fainter until nothing remained. Even the wind outside was silent. Despite this, the smell of honey intensified causing the bees to glance about uneasily as if sensing that something was wrong.