Sergeyich destroys the grey-bee hive with a grenade

Sergeyich destroys the grey-bee hive with a grenade after deciding that his dreams have identified it as a threat. The act is both practical and fantastical: he treats the hive as a possible source of contamination or surveillance, but his suspicions arise from imagined enemy bees and a belief that God speaks through dreams. The explosion obliterates the hive, while the sight of a surviving bee leaves the outcome for its inhabitants uncertain.

The hive as a warning

The hive stands out from the others because its bees look grey to Sergeyich. Earlier, a nightmare had shown him enormous, hunched warrior bees emerging from this same hive and setting off on a military mission. He also remembers a more recent dream in which strange figures appeared from the dark woods. Taking the images together, he decides that the dreams are connected and that they tell him what to do. His conviction gives a supernatural frame to an otherwise material decision about the safety of his bees.

The threat itself remains unconfirmed. Looking inside the hive, Sergeyich sees only a few bees on top of the combs, which seem grey to him. He wonders whether someone has deliberately infected them in order to introduce disease into Ukraine, then considers whether equipment might have been installed to spy on him and the war. His thoughts draw on reports of biological weapons and tiny surveillance devices, but the scene supplies no evidence that either suspicion is true. The gap between what he observes and what he fears is central to the decision that follows.

Removing the hive

Sergeyich climbs onto the trailer and loosens the strap holding the officially inspected hive and its neighbour in place. He pulls the grey-bee hive toward himself; surprised by how readily it moves, he takes it off the trailer. After carrying it about a hundred metres from the Lada, he lifts the roof and checks inside. The physical separation makes the hive an immediate object of scrutiny, distinct from the rest of his transported bees.

He leaves the hive open and backs toward the car. There he retrieves the grenade, which still feels warm, weighs it in his palm, and returns to a point about twenty metres from the hive. He pulls the pin, throws it, and drops to the ground, following the protective action he has seen in films. Because he throws himself down immediately, he does not see how close the grenade comes to the grey bees before it explodes. The procedure is deliberate, but his understanding of what he is attacking remains shaped by conjecture.

The blast and its aftermath

The force presses Sergeyich’s face into the earth. He stays still until the thunder has passed, then gets to his feet, unsteady. The narration gives the blast room to register through his loss of orientation and the silence that follows rather than through an account of injuries. When he looks back, the hive is gone: only a crater, pieces of wood, and a fragment of comb remain. The single bee that flies past interrupts the apparent completeness of the destruction. Sergeyich thinks that some bees have survived, though not all.

The episode reverses the ordinary terms of Sergeyich’s work. He usually watches over the bees’ health and gathers what they produce; their warmth, activity, and resilience have formed the rhythm of his life. Their hives also sustain him materially. While preparing to travel, he plans to secure them against the road and pack jars of honey, treating honey as a store of value; elsewhere, its exchange for food gives him groceries and a line of credit. Here, however, he destroys one hive in the name of protection, and the grenade turns his capacity to care for the apiary into an act of irreversible force.

Care, fear, and uncertainty

The book repeatedly presents bee life as governed by concrete needs. In winter, the bees maintain warmth inside the hives rather than relying on a heated shed, and Sergeyich explains that they must stay awake to avoid freezing. In summer, their wingbeats assure him of both the colony’s health and his own presence. He watches their activity closely, even as he interprets their social order as a comparison with human life. Against that sustained attention, his response to the grey hive is a stark break: he acts not on a demonstrated danger but on the meaning he assigns to its appearance and to his dreams.

The blast does not resolve the uncertainty that prompted it. Sergeyich destroys the hive, but there is no confirmation of infection, hidden equipment, or hostile purpose. Nor does the surviving bee establish how much of the colony remains. The ending holds together the crater, the fragment of comb, and the bee in flight: destruction is certain, but the fate of every bee is not. In that unsettled outcome, the episode brings together wartime fear and the fragile, practical bond between a beekeeper and the creatures whose lives he normally works to preserve.