Aidan Cresney seems to be a model citizen. An active member of the parish council and a former barrister, he took up beekeeping as a retirement hobby. Cresney confidently boasts that bees will never attack an apiarist 'who knows what he's doing'. Yet one day he is found dead after suffering multiple stings. When a second family member dies in similar circumstances, tongues begin to wag. And Melissa Craig, the Cotswolds' intrepid crime-writing sleuth, starts to uncover some disturbing secrets.