AS FAR AS BEA GOES

Each spray expanded into a cloud of smoke, quickly carried away by the same swift wind that rustled the mulberry tree's leaves and swayed its slender branches. As the smoke billowed in the light, they swooped through it like tiny planes in distress. They rushed back in to protect the cells. The small cloud spread out at first in a round shape and then, caught by the air, always stretched in the same way and took the same amount of time. Not too much time had to pass between sprays, so as soon as a cloud dispersed and its remnants drifted away on the wind, I would press the smoker again, dosing the same force each time because I liked being able to make clouds identical to each other. I gave only four sprays, not too many, and then waited a few minutes for them to subside. I looked up at the dark yellow sky in which the real clouds were slowly swimming, the huge, towering ones that I could see brown that day and whose outlines I could still barely make out. I closed one eye, then the other, then the first again. Of the trees, of those closer, I could see the branches and leaves but those farther away I could still see them out of focus as if in a blurry photo and the flowers between their branches were white patches with purple hues that must not have been real.
Some had not come close and were still buzzing among the orange trees, I could hear them loitering slowly over the last orange blossoms before they decided to return. While I was waiting for them A 'malandrina' appeared, that's what Grandfather called wasps. She flew in the entrance to one of the hives, ready to attack. Back and forth without stopping for a moment. To drive it away I threw a spray of smoke at it but it did not help, instead it came closer, flapping from side to side as it was continually repelled by small, invisible glass walls.
"Do you see the malandrina? Eh, Adelina, do you see her?" I nodded yes, and Grandfather took me by the shoulders, turned me around and with his outstretched finger made me follow the flight of the wasp that had meanwhile moved away.
"You have to know how to recognize them from afar, the bad bees. See, the bee flies calmer, straighter: see? You can see better now, can't you?" I nodded at him one more time and he then, taking short little steps and a few turns, followed the wasp, holding his arms out until with a sharp blow he crushed it in his hands then opened his palm before my eyes to show it to me up close. It was still moving stunned and perhaps just about to die. She kept curling up on Grandpa's dark, calloused palm, too weak to sting anymore. She was indeed very different from bees, her hairless body divided sharply into two parts with her abdomen attached to the rest in a thin spot. But I already knew what wasps look like. Finally, throwing it into the air as if to make it fly again, Grandpa exclaimed aloud in a conciliatory tone:
"Eh, they have to make a living, too. The bees hunt them to bring them to the young." She didn't resume flying along the path he had launched her on; instead, she fell, still squirming on the ground among the squashed mulberries. I moved closer to look at her, hoping she would recover. Grandfather was crude some times, what was the point of killing it? Of wasps I had seen many before. There were always some there. The mulberry tree had littered all around, the clearing in front of the little house at that time was full of its fallen fruit. They sent out a good, rotten smell, sour and sweet at the same time. It must have been that smell that attracted them....