The Secret Life of Bees: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

According to a book on bees, a honeybee relies on careful communication with other bees.

It’s July 28, a “day for the record books,” Lily claims. It’s an especially hot day, but everyone goes about the house, making honey as usual. Lily and August go to put more sugar water in the hives, as the hot weather has probably evaporated the water already inside. While Lily replaces a lid on a hive box, a bee stings her. August explains that the hot weather makes the bees “out of sorts.” Lily asks August if she thinks she could be a beekeeper one day. August tells Lily that if she loves beekeeping, she’ll find a way to do it.

Lily and August come back from the hives to eat lunch. After their meal, Rosaleen finds a hose and sprays it at her friends. They laugh together, and August wrestles Lily for control of the hose, giggling about the absurdity of roughhousing with a girl less than half her age.

In the afternoon it gets even hotter. Lily rests in the honey house and thinks about her call to T. Ray. She wants to tell Rosaleen about it, but decides against doing so, since this would involve admitting to someone else that she cares about her father.

Lily goes into the house for a drink of water, and finds May sitting in the floor. May says that she’s seen a roach on the ground—she’s busy making a trail of marshmallows on the ground to lure the bug into the open. Lily remembers that her mother used to do exactly the same thing: she remembers T. Ray telling her that her mother would lure roaches with marshmallows. She can’t help but wonder if May learned the trick from her mother. Lily asks May if she ever knew a woman named Deborah Fontanel (Deborah’s maiden name). May immediately replies, “She stayed out there in the honey house.” Lily is amazed to hear this: she can sense that May wouldn’t lie about this. Stunned, Lily leaves the house and returns to the hone house without saying anything else to May. She falls asleep, and has a vivid dream about making a trail of honey to lure her mother back home.

The next morning, Lily goes into the house and greets the Boatwrights. They can tell that something is off with Lily, but Lily refuses to explain herself. She wants to ask August about Deborah and demand to know why August didn’t tell Lily she knew Deborah. In the end, however, Lily decides against this: a part of her doesn’t want to know the answer.

On Friday afternoon, Lily takes the photograph of her mother and goes to talk to August about Deborah. As she’s about to walk into the house, Zach calls her—apparently, August is in the house talking with customers. To pass the time, Zach invites Lily to go to the store with him. As they drive the honey wagon to the store, Lily and Zach see an unusually big crowd in the street. Lily realizes that the people have come out to see Jack Palance. Zach tells Lily to wait in the honey wagon while he goes into the store to buy a radiator. Lily senses that something will go wrong.

Lily watches as Zach crosses the street to go to the store. He greets a trio of his friends, one of whom shouts that Jack Palance isn’t coming to Tiburon at all. A group of white men, one of whom is carrying a shovel, hears this, and walks toward Zach and his friends. One member of the trio—a boy named Jackson, Lily later learns—hits one of the white men with his soda bottle. An even bigger group of white men rushes over to Zach and his friends, demanding to know who used the bottle as a weapon. None of the boys speak, even though the group promises to let the other three go if they reveal the perpetrator.

Lily watches as the police arrest Zach and his friends. Horrified, Lily runs back to the Boatwright house (Zach had the keys to the honey wagon) and finds August, Neil, Clayton Forrest, and Rosaleen gathered together: Zach has used his one phone call to alert Forrest to his arrest, and Forrest has spread the word. Forrest explains that the judge is out of town, meaning that Zach has no choice but to spend the next five days in jail. August’s eyes have a “fire inside them.”

Lily goes to the jailhouse, along with August. August tells the jailer, a man named Eddie Hazelwurst, that she’s Zach’s godmother. He allows August and Lily to see Zach for five minutes. In his cell, Lily finds that Zach looks frightened and uncertain. August tries to calm him by telling him about the bees on the farm. Zach asks Lily if she’s been writing in her notebook. Lily wants to touch Zach’s face, but knows that she must not. Instead, she tells Zach that she’ll put his experience in a story.

For the next few days, the Boatwright house is desperate for any news about Zach. Nobody tells May what’s happened, for fear that she’ll go to the stone wall again. Unfortunately, she answers a phone call from Zach’s mother, and learns about Zach’s imprisonment. Eerily calm, May goes to the wall to put a new slip of paper in the cracks.