The Secret Life of Bees: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

The chapter begins with a quote from a book about bees: when a queen bee is taken from a hive, the other bees notice her absence immediately, and begin to act “queenly” themselves.

The year is 1964. An unnamed narrator sits in bed and watches bees flying around the room. The narrator, a 14-year-old girl, thinks back on everything that’s happened to her that summer. She compares the bees in her room to angels, coming to Earth to right the world’s wrongs. She concludes that, in spite of everything, she remains “tender toward the bees.”

It’s July 1, 1964 (a flashback from the previous scene). The narrator sits in bed. Rosaleen, the family maid, has worked for the narrator’s family since the narrator’s mother’s death. Because Rosaleen has no children of her own, she thinks of the narrator as her child. The narrator’s father is T. Ray—she never calls him “Daddy.”

The narrator’s mother died when she was 4 years old, supposedly because of an “accident.” The narrator thinks about being reunited with her mother in Heaven one day. She also thinks about the misery of living with her father, T. Ray—a mean, bitter man. Although he loved his wife, he hasn’t been the same since her death.

The narrator sees a swarm of bees entering her room, and she runs to wake her father. When T. Ray surveys the narrator’s room, he finds no bees, and angrily tells the narrator—whose name, we learn, is Lily Owens—“this isn’t funny.”

Lily’s only memory of her mother (Deborah, as we learn later) concerns the day of her death, December 3, 1954. Her mother was walking through the house, packing a suitcase, when T. Ray walked in and began arguing with her. Lily overheard their yelling, but can’t remember what the argument was about, exactly. Suddenly, Lily’s mother ran to Lily and held her in her arms—then, T. Ray pulled her mother away. Lily remembers her mother waving a gun at T. Ray, and then T. Ray snatching the gun. Lily remembers picking up the gun when her father dropped it, and then a loud gunshot, and then silence. Lily sometimes imagines that she is responsible for her mother’s death.

Lily and T. Ray live in the town of Sylvan, South Carolina. Lily is an unpopular child, partly because she’s shy and partly because T. Ray refuses to take her to football games or other town events. She tried to attend the town’s Charm School, but because she had no mother to present her with the traditional white rose, she wasn’t admitted. Rosaleen had wanted to give her the rose, but because Rosaleen is black, this wasn’t allowed.

The morning after she wakes T. Ray, Lily tries to catch a bee to prove that she wasn’t lying last night. She shows Rosaleen the jar she’s found, and Rosaleen warns her that she’ll be stung. Lily nods, thinking to herself that Rosaleen—in spite of her tough attitude—loves her very much. Rosaleen left her husband because he drank and “caroused” too much, and though she has many siblings, she never sees them. Lily often fantasizes about Rosaleen becoming white and becoming her “real” mother, or else imagines herself becoming a “Negro orphan” and being adopted by Rosaleen.

Lily’s mother was named Deborah, she recalls. Deborah—whose name T. Ray refuses to say anymore—was born in Virginia. Growing up without a mother, Lily had to rely on Rosaleen for “mother’s advice” about things like her period, trying out for the cheerleading team, etc. Lily keeps some of her mother’s old things in a tin box: her gloves, a photograph of her that Lily found in the attic, and a picture of the Virgin Mary, depicted as a black woman, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” scribbled on the back. Nobody knows about the box, not even Rosaleen. Lily keeps it buried beneath a tree.

Lily spends her afternoon selling the peaches her father picks. This is her summer job—an extremely lonely job, since it requires her to sit in a roadside hut alone for long hours every day. She tries to read books during her job, but T. Ray sometimes sees her reading, and becomes so angry that she’s forced to spend her time doing nothing. In spite of this, Lily loves reading. One of her schoolteachers, Mrs. Henry, made her fall in love with Shakespeare, and encouraged her to become a professor a writer. Although T. Ray doesn’t support Lily’s writing, and even mocks her for wanting to study writing in college, Lily hopes that Mrs. Henry will be able to find a way to send her to college on scholarship.

Lily remembers the day when she was 6, and T. Ray found her sticking a nail in his peaches. To Lily’s surprise, T. Ray didn’t punish her. Instead, he sat her down and told her about Deborah. Lily vividly remembers the day her mother died—she even blames herself for the death, since she remembers holding the gun at one point.

Lily tells T. Ray she remembers the day her mother died. Angry and surprised, T. Ray tells Lily to tell him everything she remembers. Lily explains that she remembers a gun, an argument, a loud explosion, and—at one point—picking up the gun. T. Ray nods and tells Lily that the gun went off when Lily picked it up. As he told the police, it was a horrible accident that led to Deborah’s death: Lily accidently aimed the gun at her mother. With this, T. Ray leaves Lily alone.

At 6 pm on the hot July day, Lily walks back to the house. She finds Rosaleen in the living room, watching the television set. Lyndon B. Johnson has just signed the Civil Rights Act, protecting the rights of African Americans in the U.S. Rosaleen says “Hallelujah” when she hears this news, but Lily is worried—she wonders how the people of Sylvan will react.

At dinner that evening, Lily brings up her birthday to T. Ray. She tells him she’d like to have a silver bracelet as a present, but T. Ray doesn’t reply. That night, she waits for her father to fall asleep, and then sneaks outside to watch the full moon. She goes to a tree and digs up the tin box that contains her mother’s possessions. She looks at the photograph and strokes Deborah’s gloves. Suddenly Lily hears T. Ray running toward her with a flashlight, and she quickly covers the tin with dirt. T. Ray angrily calls Lily a “slut” for sneaking out, and he punishes her by making her “kneel on grits” (ground-up corn).

The next morning, T. Ray orders Lily to go to the peach stand and “do some work.” Lily nods, but secretly decides to leave T. Ray as soon as possible. In the afternoon, she catches a few bees in her jar.

In the evening, Rosaleen tells Lily that she’ll be in town tomorrow, rather than coming in to clean the house. Lily notices that Rosaleen has been practicing writing her own name. Rosaleen explains that there’s a voter’s rally on the 4th of July to celebrate the new Civil Rights Act: Rosaleen is going to register to vote. Lily, who remembers the news of the blacks in Mississippi who were murdered for registering, asks Rosaleen if T. Ray knows where she’ll be. Rosaleen replies, “T. Ray don’t know nothing.”

When her father gets home, Lily tells him that she’s going to walk into town with Rosaleen to “buy some sanitary supplies.” T. Ray nods, disgusted, as he assumes Lily is talking about “female puberty.” That night, Lily decides to let the bees out of her jar. To her surprise, the bees stay in the jar even after she removes the lid.

In the morning, Rosaleen presents Lily with a cake for her birthday. Lily gratefully eats some of the cake, and then she and Rosaleen walk into town, as planned. They walk past the town’s Baptist Church. Lily’s knees still hurt from T. Ray’s punishment, and so they decide to rest in the church for a moment. Inside, Lily notices the church’s milky-colored windows, out of which she’s stared almost every Sunday since she was born. Lily notes that Rosaleen doesn’t go to church: she has her own religion, based on a combination of ancestor and nature worship. T. Ray finds this religion absurd, but Lily is intrigued by it.

A priest named Brother Gerald greets Lily, but looks uncomfortable around Rosaleen, who, as a black woman, isn’t allowed in the church. Gerald has previously told Lily that he loves black people, but thinks they should “have their own places.” Rosaleen asks Gerald for a fan for Lily, since it’s her birthday, but Gerald refuses, saying there aren’t enough to go around. Lily and Rosaleen leave the church, and outside, Rosaleen shows Lily that she’s stolen two fans.

Lily and Rosaleen proceed to the “bad part” of Sylvan. They see a group of rough-looking men playing cards and shouting. One of the men calls Rosaleen a “nigger,” to which Rosaleen proudly replies that she’s come to Sylvan to register to vote. Although Lily whispers that they should keep moving, Rosaleen stays put. The men approach Rosaleen, ask her where she got her fan: she says she stole the fans from a church, and then she empties her snuffbox onto the men’s shoes. Furious, the men order her to clean their shoes, but she refuses. They push her, and a fight breaks out. Lily feels herself “caught up in a current.” She sees Rosaleen lying on the ground, bleeding.

The police arrive, and inform Rosaleen that she’s under arrest for “assault, theft, and disturbing the peace.”