# Read the first page of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Read the opening of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd free, no signup. A grieving girl flees to live among beekeeping women in 1964.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-secret-life-of-bees-sue-monk-kidd
- Genre: Literary fiction
- Year: 2000
- ISBN: 9780143124320
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780143124320&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780143124320
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780143124320

## The opening

The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community;

if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.

- Man and Insects

One

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.

During the day I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom, sounding like a radio tuned to static in the next room, and I imagined them in there turning the walls into honeycombs, with honey seeping out for me to taste.

The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting 1 2 Sue Monk Kidd events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn't mind; I will get to that. Right now it's enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees.

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