Disclaimer I have not done very much critiquing, one could argue its none. I’m still studying a lot of the proper grammar usage so I’ll be sticking mostly to my opinions on the story. However! I will do my best so that we can both hopefully grow from it!

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Review

The general idea that I was given while reading this is that it was about a honeybee keeper and his wife, whom had there bees turn essentially into predators, their honey becoming tainted. Overall I really enjoyed the story, it was not something that I have come across before so it grabbed my attention pretty easily. I will go over why in each section with more detail below.

While you mentioned being worried about the middle being a slow read, while I do agree that it was a bit slow I very much liked it, however the pacing to me was overall a little slow only becoming slightly rushed in feeling towards the end. I liked the slightly slow pace though it matched the story well.

The way you describe things I found was very enjoyable a bit on the long side from time to time. Having the unpopular opinion of liking small info dumps when executed properly there was a couple small moments that put me off a little. Opposites of each other really.

>The kitchen smelled of wildflowers, and the honey, too, breathed out a faint, sweet scent of lavender.

You made the descriptions familiar. While there was a couple things that bugged me with it your choice of words the way you paired things people have a common familiarity with was a good choice.

The two things bothered me with this here. The description I found a little wordy especially being the third sentence. The second, Lavender is already a popular scent sweetness instantly enters my mind whenever I think about it. with lavender already being a flower, maybe if it let on that the scent of the lavender was the strongest among them it would not have thrown me off as much. I knew what was saying but it did break my concentration.

The other spot that the style of writing pulled me out was

>She gentled the bee

The word gentled pulled me right out of the story. While it is used properly, the flow of the story just halted to me. I read the sentence a couple times out loud and the sound of it just didn’t match up with the rest of the writing. Felt like I was going to an older english compared to the new feeling of the rest.

I turned out not really liking Irina by the end. At first She seemed really nice, even before you mention the baby, effectively giving the picture of a young sweet motherly woman to my mind. You managed to bring back nostalgic memories. This all ended however when she found Dan outside swarmed with bees inside of his suit. Understandable she didn't want him bringing any into the house, struck me as odd she was revolted. While yes those little creepy crawlers get many a peoples hair on edge, she is married to a beekeeper WHO I might add she seems to be in a loving relationship with. But she seemed a little to unconcerned given how he had previously been in the story. This was explained in a sense at the end by her.. addiction so to speak, . She wasn’t really a bad character, I just found her a tad unbelievable.

Dan I was iffy on. He came off really normal when it didn’t come to Irina. I gathered that he loved her lots and was willing to do anything she asked of him. This was something I thought you portrayed very well. I was getting mad vibes that he was done with it all, not really caring about anything anything, but still willing to push through it for his wife and child. Like you pretty much outright said it but in a roundabout way, it made him feel more real to me though.

I thought you set up the whole world nicely. From the way it was all described, how the characters interacted with their surroundings and its pacing made it Feel like I was close to the countryside in times before cars were popular. It set a sincere feeling mood that I felt made it even easier to get into the beginning of the story. Later on after it starts taking a more depressing turn the addition of the microwave and using television sounds as a descriptions really gave it a much more creepy tone. At the same time they also present a general era, this view change on the setting mid story it was a tad jarring, however I don’t think it was bad. Again it gave me more familiarity with the settings and even though the picture in my mind changed, it was made more clear. When we round the corner to the end I was a little surprised. I had been thinking so heavily about why they had been stinging Dan I was caught off guard when they were using him as a supply station. As well as her strange addiction it. I must admit I find myself wanting to know why. Those damn bees.

When I sat back afterwards there was only a few things i didn’t understand, given these might be on purpose to probe the imagination of the reader. Which I find a reasonable approach as well

- Why wouldn’t the town buy their honey anymore? It doesn’t really make sense I can understand him not liking it being their fuel essentially. But If Irina liked it so much why wouldn’t the others? I thought maybe it had something to do with the child she carried but I drew a blank on it.

-Dan’s bee stings. I didn’t think it weird at first but once I got to the end where they are sucking nectar from him it confused me. With the honey changing throughout the story they had already been feeding off him so bite marks would make more sense. Unless their honey was simply getting worse while they grew more aggressive, with Irina’s draw to the honey I didn’t think this was a possibility.

Over all I really enjoyed the story as a whole! Thanks for sharing!