43 pages • 1 hour read
Meredith MayThe Honey Bus
Meredith MayNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 14-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Bee Dance”
By the time she enters high school, Meredith and her brother Matthew are fully disengaged from their mother. Meredith no longer has hope that she can have a normal relationship with her mother, whom she now considers a roommate.
On a trip to Grandpa’s hives in Big Sur, Meredith realizes that, after nearly a decade of living with her grandparents, she can identify the role of each of the bees she sees on a hive. She notices a field bee—tasked with finding sources of food for the hive—moving in an erratic way. Grandpa explains that the bee is dancing to communicate directions to the rest of the hive. He explains that scout bees—those responsible for finding new homes for the hive—also dance to direct other scouts to future hive sites. The other scout bees choose between the potential sites by joining the dance of the bee who identified the spot they like best. Meredith is impressed by the democracy and planning demonstrated by scout bees.
When Grandpa asks about Meredith’s plans for her future, she realizes that she has not thought beyond high school graduation. Grandpa encourages her to attend college, and she throws herself into her classes and after-school activities in order to improve her applications. Granny helps Meredith by volunteering at her school’s career center and offering to pretend to be Meredith and write to a local newspaper. Meredith gets a job at a local steakhouse and begins saving for college. When Meredith menstruates for the first time, her mother simply offers her money to buy period products, refusing to help her or explain the mechanics of menstruation. Meredith applies to Mills College, a women’s university in Oakland, and is admitted. Meredith is surprised to find that her brother is not as excited as she is, then realizes that going to college means that he’ll be left alone at home. Matthew admits that their mother once tried to hit him but that he overpowered her and told her not to try it again. Meredith questions why their mother is so volatile; Matthew says that they’ll never know.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Spilled Sugar”
A few weeks before leaving for college, Meredith’s mother tries to start a conversation for the first time in months. Sally acknowledges that she has not been the best mother to Meredith but insists that she tried her best. When Meredith doesn’t respond, Sally continues that Meredith’s childhood was pretty good and could have been worse. She claims that her own childhood was much worse. Meredith senses that her mother wants to say more and asks about her childhood. Sally reveals that her birth father was physically and emotionally abusive. From the age of three onward, he frequently hit Sally with a long, thin tree branch he called a whipping stick. Sally never knew why her father beat her, and she spent her childhood trying to be quiet and keep out of his way. Eventually, Sally began to believe that she deserved the abuse that she received.
Meredith is disturbed by the matter-of-fact nature of her mother’s descriptions of this abuse. She imagines her mother scared and struggling to make sense of the violence she’s facing and wishes that she could have protected her. When she asks why Granny didn’t protect her from her father, Sally explains that he was abusing her, too. Meredith realizes that Granny’s devotion to Meredith in the present is her way of making up for not protecting her in the past. Meredith tells Sally that she knows that Sally did the best she could as a mother.
Sally gives Meredith a box of her belongings to sort through before being donated. Inside, Meredith finds her baby book. She is hurt to find that her mother would give up such precious memories, and she puts the book back on her mother’s shelf. When she tells Matthew about the book, he reveals that Sally tried to give away his, too. Meredith and Matthew enter the honey bus to help Grandpa bottle the new spring honey. As they work, Meredith realizes that Matthew and Grandpa are her family. She expresses gratitude for their support and the lessons they learned from the honey bees.
Epilogue Summary
There is a superstition among beekeepers that bees must be told when their keeper has died, or the hive will grow listless and begin to fail. According to the superstition, the family of the deceased should place a black shroud over the hive and sing to the bees, then ask permission to be their new keeper.
In 2015, when Meredith May is 45, Grandpa asks her to take care of his bees. At the age of 89, Grandpa has given up all but one of his hives, and the honey bus has been sold for scraps. May has become an urban beekeeper. After graduating from college, May dedicated herself completely to her career in journalism, rarely making the trip up to Big Sur. As Grandpa got sick in his final years, she began to visit more frequently. These trips inspired her to place two hives on the roof of her workplace, the San Francisco Chronicle.
After Grandpa’s death, May keeps her promise to care for his bees by bringing them back with her to San Francisco. After announcing Grandpa’s death, she waits for a change in the hive. Sensing nothing, she opens the hive and is shocked to find that it is infected. She notices approximately 1,000 bees—one-fifth of the amount necessary to start a hive—huddling together in one of the frames of the hive, protecting dozens of precious eggs. May transfers the bees carefully to a new, clean hive. May and her brother scatter Grandpa’s ashes in Big Sur. Shortly after, Granny dies, followed closely by Sally. Before Sally dies, she calls May and asks her to make her feel better about their failed relationship. May tells her to rest.
In San Francisco, May teaches a group of elementary students about bees and the importance of pollinators. When a young boy tells her that his grandfather keeps bees, she calls him the luckiest boy in the world.
Chapter 14-Epilogue Analysis
The final section of The Honey Bus highlights The Importance of Family Support. Meredith’s mother, Sally, offers a negative example, demonstrating how a lack of parental support can have negative emotional and physical consequences. In Chapter 14, Meredith experiences menstruation for the first time and asks Sally for help, hoping for “that mother-daughter moment when she tells me about her first time” and guidance on what kind of period products to buy (279-80). However, Sally is unwilling to help. The description of Meredith “practicing walking with a pad between [her] legs” suggests that Meredith has never been taught how to use period products (281). Although Meredith does not explicitly identify the dangers of not knowing about period products, the inclusion of this detail suggests that the adult May recognizes the significance of the moment. This scene suggests that there can be emotional and physical consequences to a lack of family support.
While Sally offers a negative example of the consequences of a lack of family support, Granny and Grandpa show that family support can help lift an individual out of difficult circumstances. In Chapter 14, Granny takes a number of drastic steps to help Meredith get into college, including writing a letter to the local newspaper pretending to be Meredith and “offering to write a youth column for free” in order to pad Meredith’s applications (277). Later, Granny “signed on as a volunteer in the high school career center so she could get her hands on every college scholarship that came in and steer it [Meredith’s] way before the other students had a chance to apply” (283). This active, hands-on family support is what allows Meredith to escape living with her mother and pursue larger dreams beyond Big Sur. Granny’s influence offers a stark contrast to Sally’s neglect and demonstrates the positive effects of family support.
In the memoir’s Epilogue, May describes the transition from child to caretaker, demonstrating that she has internalized The Importance of Family Support. Throughout the memoir, Grandpa acts as her primary parental figure, filling the gap left by her mother. In the Epilogue, May becomes a caretaker for both of these adults in their final years. In 2015, Grandpa “sensed that he was nearing the end” (306), and he asks May to care for his bees. The memoir suggests that May understands this request as a request to take care of Grandpa himself. May “stopped rushing around the globe, and spent [her] weekends sitting with him” in the weeks before his death (308). Her physical presence with Grandpa in his final weeks suggests her understanding of the need for family support. Similarly, May provides emotional support to her mother in the weeks before her death, promising Sally that “there’s nothing to worry about anymore” (314). The memoir’s attention to May’s support of her family as an adult highlights its thematic interest in family support.
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