The sun rose an hour after Albert. From his old summer-seat, he greeted it with a frown and continued to scowl while the lawn stepped from purple shade into dazzling green. Later, when the wooden boxes at the far end of the garden crept into the spotlight, he had to look away.

     Birds sparked into their insane chatter, attracting protests from the local dogs, which in turn seemed to coax the neighbourhood into life. Albert, though, sat in silence, feeling foolish for ever thinking his Canute-like attempt could hold back the dawn. Suzie didn't get up until an hour later, by which time sunrise felt like it had happened years ago and the night belonged to someone else.

     "Your side of the bed was stone cold," she said through a yawn. Her grey hair was short and wild but she seemed to like it that way these days and seldom sculpted it into anything more ordered unless they had plans to go out. They wouldn't be going out today. "You been up all night again?"

     "Not all night."

     "Have they come back?"

     Albert didn't answer.

     "No, Suzie. Guess not, Suzie," Suzie muttered and she went indoors.

     By late morning, the hives lacked any real activity. He saw a few workers hover tentatively at the vents before crawling in, but he swore the same ones left moments later and darted away, like they'd only returned to taunt.

     The hubbub from the house made up for the tranquility in the garden. While a van beeped its way down the drive, metal clinked against the chopping board as Suzie prepared towers of sandwiches. He couldn't tell how many people gave their thanks, but they sounded young and enthusiastic. Excited chatter accompanied lunch and then the noise-makers went about demolishing the upstairs of Albert's house.

     There was no shortage of work to be done and the comings and goings continued long into the afternoon. Sophie, his youngest, had accumulated a lot of junk in her eighteen years. She wasn't taking it all away with her, but most of the furniture needed deconstructing before being reconstructed somewhere else, somewhere new, in the city.

     There were too many things Albert wanted to shout to Suzie or Sophie or to anyone else who might dare to listen. These were mostly unreasonable things, he admitted, and themes that had been aired enough during the past weeks. So he decided the best thing he could do was abandon his post on the old summer-seat and head to his boxes at the far end of the garden, where youth and energy and laughter and life might not agitate him so much.

     "Where are you hiding today, Beatrice?" he whispered as he opened the first hive.

     Earlier that summer, lifting out a frame would require his smoker and suit, but the population of bees hardly justified the effort these days. And besides, Albert thought, if there's one thing a beekeeper is used to, it's being stung.

     Along with a shared name, the queens had been given a bright green dot of paint on the thorax to make them stand out. Albert found this Beatrice easily, near the centre of the comb, only her most loyal workers still in attendance. She hadn't left. One by one, he checked the other boxes. Those queens hadn't left, either. If they had, he might be able to understand the decline of the hives. As it was, the only explanation had come from Suzie. "Maybe it's just one of those things," she'd said with a shrug. That hadn't helped. He still didn't understand.

     Afternoon had developed into early evening by the time he'd run out of fictitious jobs to carry out on the boxes. He left them with his head bowed, his slippered feet shuffling through grass that needed cut. When he reached the house and looked up, the van had abandoned the drive.

     "She's gone," Suzie said from the kitchen door.

     "They're all gone."

     "You let her leave without saying goodbye or..."

     He looked at his slippers again and resisted the temptation to turn back to his dying hives.

     "You can be a stupid old man sometimes. She's leaving home, Al. She's not leaving you." Suzie paused. "We're all getting old, you know. It's just another one of those things."

     With a groan, he lowered himself on to the old summer-seat, hoping Suzie would join him but she disappeared into the house and turned up the radio, something she only ever did to conceal a temper. As he examined his hands and wondered how things had ended up this way, a bee landed on his arm. It was desperately thin and Albert saw it shiver as it staggered towards his wrist. He smiled sadly and watched as the worker, without warning or provocation, slid its sting into his thin skin. Its abdomen pulsed and swelled and then, like it was the greatest effort imaginable, its wings buzzed and it tore itself free, leaving the barb to twitch like a flag in the breeze.

     "Beekeepers get stung," Albert murmured with a nod. He drew a thumbnail across his wrist and without revealing as much as a wince, he scratched out the sting. He held it for a moment then let it go, losing it among the grass. He stood up.

     Suzie called on him for dinner while he was gathering cans of petrol from the shed. Realising he had barely eaten all day, he returned to the house and devoured his meal while the hives burned and the last of his bees made their escape.

     As the evening tired, he and Suzie sat on the old summer-seat and worked through a bottle of wine. They watched trails of smoke blend into the bruising sky and discussed what they would do tomorrow and how they would get their housewarming present into the city. The fire went out just as the sun went down.