Bram kept bees in a shed behind his grandfather's house. His grandfather had kept bees before him, and his grandfather's grandfather. From the age of seven he had known one thing about the shed. You counted the bees that went in and the bees that came out. In winter you counted the bees that stayed.

In the spring the shed got busy. The bees climbed out over the ground and into the air, fanning at the entrance to drive the damp out. The sound was like a wave that started in the earth and never came up. His grandfather sat beside him with a mug of tea and a yellow pad. One counted out loud and the other wrote. They swapped every hour. By four o'clock Bram wrote eleven thousand one hundred and forty and shut the pad.

“Eleven thousand one hundred and forty,” his grandfather said. “I counted them.” “You counted them going in.” “No. In and out.” “Did you finish the sheet? The whole sheet?” Bram looked at the pad. Four pages of neat rows of tens, and the rest of the last page empty. “No.” “Then you have a number,” his grandfather said, “and not an answer.”

They counted together on the Saturday, and his grandfather did the writing. When one of them lost his place the other stopped the clock until he found it again. When the sun came through the window they shaded the glass with a sack. By three o'clock their hands were stiff. His grandfather turned the pad round. “Two hundred and forty thousand,” he said. “Give or take a few thousand.”

Bram looked at it for a long time. He had thought there might be forty thousand bees. Bees do not come in twos. They come in tens and hundreds and thousands, and then some number he had no name for. “How do you know it is that many?”

His grandfather turned his pencil over and pointed at a comb on the wall. “Count the bees on one comb. Then count the combs. Then count the boxes in the shed and the boxes up the tree. Every comb holds about five thousand bees when it is full.” “Did you count the boxes?” “Yes. Fourteen.” Then he said, “And the bees that are flying?”

“There are about three thousand of those out looking for food right now,” his grandfather said. “Nobody can count them and nobody ever has. So we add three thousand to the twenty-four and write twenty-seven, and we know it is wrong. We know it is wrong by about three thousand, and we write it down wrong. That is the trade.” Bram thought about that. A number you knew was wrong, and you wrote it down anyway.

The rest of the summer went well. The boxes filled up heavy, and by September the honey was capped white. His grandfather made him say out loud what a full box weighed, then say it again, because he had got it right the first time. Sixty pounds for a deep. In the last week of September the bees were flying low. Then they stopped. His grandfather closed up the boxes in the dark, with a cloth over his head and his torch in his teeth. “Winter,” he said.

“Where do they go?” Bram asked. “Here.” The shed got cold. The cluster hung high under the roof boards, where the shed keeps its heat. In November the middle of the cluster measured about forty degrees, while the air two feet below it measured six. A bee inside was not cold. A bee two feet under was cold enough to stop.

Bram read the top of the shed once a day, the same cold place. Seven degrees. Six degrees. Five in the frosts. Then in January a week when it read six every day, and his grandfather went to town instead of working. They lost that hive in the third week of February. Not to hunger, because there was honey in the frames. To damp, in the middle, of the bees.

Afterwards the other three boxes came through fine. They sat on the same bench, in the same wind, under the same roof, with the same cold air under each cluster. One of the four died. Bram kept counting the whole time. He never once wrote down a four.

At the end of the summer his grandfather put the pad on the table and turned it round, the way he always did. “Two hundred and fifty-one thousand five hundred and forty,” Bram read. “Give or take three thousand,” said his grandfather. “Give or take three thousand,” said Bram, in the same voice, and shut the pad. “Next year,” Bram said. “I will do the flying three thousand first, while I can still see them, before I do the rest.” His grandfather turned his mug round on the table. “That will be the same wrong three thousand,” he said. “I know it,” said Bram.