The Hum Only the Beekeeper Could Name

In the apiaries outside Asheville, North Carolina, a retired schoolteacher named Margaret Whitfield spent her first summer as an apprentice beekeeper convinced she would never learn the craft. Her mentor, seventy-two-year-old Earl Coggins, had kept bees for half a century. One August evening, Margaret heard a strange high-pitched piping rising from inside the hive — a sound different from the usual steady hum. She dismissed it as wind catching the frames.

Earl cocked his head. "You hear that?"

"It's just the breeze," Margaret said.

"No ma'am. That's a virgin queen piping. She's announcing herself. The whole colony is about to change."