The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 6: Winter 2018 “the most intimate domestic ties” The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex http://retiredbeekeepers.tumblr.com [email protected] Copyright © 2018 by The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex All Rights Reserved Copyright to individual articles, fiction, and art is retained by their own authors and creators. Number 6: Winter 2018 Cover image: “Then he stood before the fire.” Illustration by Sidney Paget. A Scandal in Bohemia, 1891. Spot illustrations by Basil Chap Editing and layout by Elinor Gray The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 6, Winter 2018 Contents Foreword .………………………………………………………………… 2 Art by Holly …………………………………………………………… 3 A Dissection of the Cyanea capillata by Ariana Maher …………………… 4 “There’s always two of us” by Angela Lusk …………………………. 15 A Guest, I Answer’d by BrewsterNorth ………………………………… 16 Art by Katinka Rohard Hansen ……………………………………… 21 Ingredients of Love by Marleen Donovan ………………………………… 22 Art by Ili ………………………………………………………………… 29 The Secret Sculptor by Dee Storrow ……………………………………… 30 Art by Ernest …………………………………………………………… 47 Contributors ……………………………………………………………… 48 Afterword ………………………………………………………………… 50 1 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex Foreword “… he sat gazing for a moment in silent amazement at a small blue book which lay before him. Across the cover was printed in golden letters Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.” — “His Last Bow,” 1917. hank you for buying/downloading/printing/sharing the Retired TBeekeepers’ latest issue of The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. If you enjoy this issue, please pass it on to a friend! If you really enjoy this issue, please consider donating to the Retired Beekeepers. We are an entirely volunteer-run organisation and do not charge any membership or meeting fees, but we do have some small operating costs, including the publication of this journal. We appreciate your support in whatever form and denomination it appears. If you would like a print copy of this journal, please visit retiredbeekeepers. tumblr.com/handbook for information on how to obtain one. The theme of this issue is domesticity and home life. See the Afterword for info on submitting your work to future issues and follow us at retiredbeekeepers. tumblr.com for updates on RBS projects. As always, thanks for reading. Believe us to be, dear Bees, Very sincerely yours, The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex 2 The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 6, Winter 2018 3 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex A Dissection of the Cyanea capillata Ariana Maher WATSON: Holmes? HOLMES: My dear chap? WATSON: Forgive me, but… this really is how you spend your days? HOLMES: Yes. WATSON: That’s incredible. Look, I have to say it — I’d die of boredom inside a week. You’re not offended? HOLMES: No, no… You know, your visit was singularly ill-timed. WATSON: It was? HOLMES: You really should have been here ten days ago. WATSON: Oh? HOLMES: If it’s excitement you’re after. WATSON: Why, what happened? Some of your bees escape, did they? HOLMES: Not exactly. There was a murder.1 — “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” BBC Radio, 1996 A Dissection hen Bert Coules, the head writer of the BBC Radio Sherlock Holmes Wseries,2 was asked about the essentials for writing a good Sherlock Holmes story, he had this to say: “A good quote about writing a Sherlock Holmes story is, ‘It doesn’t need to be a good detective story, but it does have to be a very good story about a detective.’ I think that’s a clever distinction.”3 With that in consideration, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” may be a rather good detective story, but when I first read it, it fell short of being a good Sherlock Holmes story. I am a novice in Sherlockian study. It was just two years ago when I watched an episode of the BBC television series Sherlock on a whim. It was such a fascinating episode, I watched more. Then I dived into the canonical books and read each one in order, starting with “A Study in Scarlet.” I’ve since discovered that more than a century’s worth of creative pastiches, essays, movies and other media adaptations featuring the great detective exist. This passion continues to grow, and these works serve to feed that passion. I loved so many of Sherlock Holmes’s cases once I read them and yet, out of all of the accounts of the great detective, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” was one I disliked more than any other. After reading through the 4 The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 6, Winter 2018 complete cases, I looked back and found this one lacking. It was a unique story with an unanticipated culprit and a stormy sea of pretty red herrings, but I could not connect with it for several reasons, especially when compared to many of the other cases. I felt adamant about my dislike for this story until this past August, when I took it into my head to exercise more during a brief but warm summer. I began walking the two and a half miles of my morning commute instead of taking the bus. The walk turned out to be an hour in each direction, so I had two hours a day with nothing to do but enjoy the sun. I took up listening to podcasts, audiobooks, and radio shows until finally I learned about an extraordinary radio adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes series by BBC Radio 4. With its opening words recorded on October 9, 1989, and its final words uttered on May 26, 1998, the BBC Radio adaptation was completed in just shy of a decade.4 During its run, the dramatization became a popular broadcast that managed to accomplish one thing that so many projects had sought to do but never actualized: dramatize every single story in the Sherlock Holmes canon with the same two lead actors as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson throughout. Each of the four novels was composed of two hour plays, while each of the short stories became forty-five minute episodes. This format was perfect for my daily walks. I could listen to one story on my way to work and one on my return. I became absorbed rather quickly and would take long detours on my way home just to fit one more mystery into my afternoon. One episode from the series was so exceptional that it effectively changed my view of “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane.” After listening to it just once, a story I disliked transformed into one of my favorites. Coules, who also happened to be the writer for this episode of the radio series, said, “Any dramatization is an interpretation.”5 So does a fresh interpretation of an original account of events have the ability to upend one’s view of the original? This was certainly the case for me. Is that proof of the skill of the production team, the approach of the writer, or a shift in the underlying themes? I propose that it is a combination of all three. An Original “At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most that I ever saw of him. Thus I must act as my own chronicler. Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty!”6 — Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” 5 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex riginally published in 1926, the case detailed events that took place Oin 1907, which was during Sherlock Holmes’s retirement in Sussex. No longer handling mysteries nor in the company of his biographer, he encountered the gruesome death of a young man whose dying words appeared to be “lion’s mane.” I will mention little else about the meat of the case for the sake of those who may have forgotten the details or have not yet read it through. It’s worth the time to experience it first hand, though I did not feel so strongly about this until after I listened to the BBC Radio interpretation of these same events. While considering “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stated that the story was “hampered by being told by Holmes himself,” which, as he put it, “cramps the narrative.”7 This was a reasonable assessment, since Mr. Holmes avoided much of the sensation of immediate peril and sweeping drama found in Dr. Watson’s writing style. When seen through Holmes’s eyes, he set out to overlook passion in favor of fact, leaving little to no room for sentiment. However, Doyle added that “the actual plot is among the very best of the whole series.”8 When I first read the story, I found it difficult to agree with his assessment. There were certain elements to the story that bothered me from the outset. I found it disheartening that my favorite character, the loyal and steadfast Dr. John H. Watson, rarely saw his old friend during his retirement and was thus not a part of this adventure. Although Henry Stackhurst took up the role as friend and sounding board to Holmes in the duration, he was too personally involved with the intrigue to act as an objective witness and, unlike Watson, there was little that Stackhurst did which motivated or inspired Holmes in the process of his deductions. Unaware of the leisurely attitude Holmes seemed to adopt while living in Sussex, it surprised me at first to see him decide to return home for breakfast after an initial assessment of the victim’s brutal death, since his younger self would have forgone his meals until he had solved the case to his satisfaction.