The End

              Lily has settled in with August and intends to live there when T. Ray shows up, determined to take Lily back. Lily refuses, and there is a struggle during which T. Ray seems to think that Lily is her mother. When the Daughters show up and refuse to let T. Ray take Lily, he finally gives up and leaves, but not before Lily can ask him who really did kill her mother. T. Ray says that it was her, and then drives away.
              At the end Lily is living with August and Rosaleen in the pink house in June's old room, ( June married). She, Zach, and Mr. Clayton's daughter are good friends and attend the local high school.

Mary Day

               August and June celebrate Mary Day every year on August 15th through the 16th. It is the day that they say Mary was taken to heaven. Mary Day, or days, is filled with a lot of eating and includes a ceremony and reenactment of when the statue of Mary was chained. The ceremony includes the Daughters rubbing honey all over the statue of Mary until she is completely covered. Lily even joins in, making sure Mary is entirely saturated with honey. 

May's Death

             After learning of Zach's arrest  and imprisonment, May goes out to her wall. After a while August, June, Rosaleen, and Lily go to find her, but they are too late. May has drowned herself in the river behind the house and they cannot save her. The police arrive later to take care of May's body and to question the women. While Lily is being questioned the officer suggests that she shouldn't be "lowering" herself by staying with the sisters.
             May's body is returned to the house and as a sign of mourning August, Lily, and Zach cover the beehives in black material. Later August finds a note from May encouraging them to live their lives.

Purple Honey

               While Lily and Zach are collection honey they find purple honey. Zach explains that it is caused by the nectar the bees collect from elderberries. They can sell the strange colored honey for much more than normal, golden colored honey, about $2.

                Lily discovers that Zak's dream is to become a lawyer. He often spends time with Clayton Forrest, a lawyer who sells the sister's honey in his office, talking about his cases.

                Lily calls her father and asks him what her favorite color is, but her father is angry and only shouts at her until Lily hangs up.

Setting: Important Events of the 1960's

President: Lyndon B. Johnson
First Lady: Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor Johnson
Top single: The Beach Boys, I Get Around
Top grossing movie: Mary Poppins, starring- Julie Andrew and Dick Van Dyke
Top t.v. show: Beverly Hillbillies on CBS
New York best seller: "The Spy who Came from the Cold" by John Le Carre
Other facts:

•  First release of Ford Mustangs
• February Beatles release #1 "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
• First lung transplant

Chapter Four

              They find her and her sisters living in a bright pink house with bee hives and a garage of honey-making supplies. Lily lies to the sisters, August, May, and June, and says that her mom died in a car accident and her father died in a tractor accident. She tells her that she and Rosaleen are on their way to find an aunt of Lily's in Richmond. Lily suspects that August knows she is lying, but the sisters let Rosaleen and Lily stay in the honey garage.
              Lily realizes that she is a little prejudice herself, and this surprises her. While exploring the yard she comes across a low stone wall with many pieces of paper stuck in between the rocks. She pulls one out and it reads, Birmingham, Sep 15, four little angels dead. Lily continues her exploration and finds a little reiver in the woods behind the house.

Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each solony is a family unit, comprising a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers. The workers cooperate

in the food-gathering, nest-building and rearing the offspring. Males are reared only at the times of year when their presence is required.

- Bees of the World

Chapter Three

              Lily and Rosaleen reach the town of Tiburon on a Sunday. Lily buys them lunch at a restaurant ( barbecue pork) and they have a picnic outside. While she is waiting for the food Lily sees a jar of honey on the shelves that has the same picture on it as the picture Lily found in the bag of her mother's things, a picture of an African American Mary. The honey is called Black Madonna Honey. After finishing lunch Lily and Rosaleen go to find August Boatwright, the woman who makes the honey.

On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony. Eventually, on location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air.

-Bees ot the World

Chapter Two

              T. Ray (Lily doesn't call her father "Dad") picks Lily up from the jail and takes her home. Lily decides to runaway, so she packs her suitcase, and sneaks Rosaleen out of the hospital where her injuries from the fight were being treated. They both start to walk along the highway, until a man in a cantaloupe truck picks them up and takes them to Tiburon, South Carolina, a place Lily found written on the back of a photo she took from a bag of her mother's things. Rosaleen and Lily spend the night next to a creek outside of Tiburon. It is apparent from the last paragraph, and earlier sections, that Lily misses her mother very much, and wonders about the only memory she has about her mother, when she is killed.

On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony.Eventually, one location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air.

-Bees of the World

Chapter One

              The beginning of the book starts out with Lily describing her nightly routine of watching the bees fly around her room. Rosaleen is quoted as saying, "Bees swarm before death."
              In chapter one we meet Lily, the main character, a fourteen year old girl living during the '60s in South Carolina. She lives with her abusive, angry father and maternal, but sometimes fierce, Rosaleen. Rosaleen ( a African American woman who works for Lily's father) acts as a mother to Lily as Lily's mother was accidently shot and killed when Lily was four. It appears that Lily was the one who picked up the fallen gun and killed her mother.
              Because of Lily's situation at home, she wears hand made clothes to school and is very unpopular. The book is told from Lily's point of view and she describes how the rest of her peers treat her. Some of the other girls talk about her behind her back, and Lily has never been invited to a slumber party, or any other social gathering. Lily has always kept suitcase ready, just in case. She also describes how her father refused to take her to homecoming, dances, or any other activity at school.
              On July 2nd, when President Johnson signs the Civils Rights Act into law, Rosaleen decides to register to vote. The next day, Rosaleen and Lily go into town, but, on the way there they run into a group of men who harrass Rosaleen and in retaliation she pours her spit on the mens' shoes. They fight and the police are called. Rosaleen is arrested.

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, the show unmistakable sign of queenlessness.

-Man and Insects