I wanted the violence of beekeeping that nobody photographs — the controlled burns, the culled colonies, the necessary destruction that lets hives survive winter. The Tuvan throat-singing tradition meeting Piedmontese mountain monasteries gave me this woman who tends by destroying, who understands that some sweetness only comes from calculated sacrifice. The collapsed monastery isn't melancholy; it's permission. The bees chose the ruin. She chose to clear the way for them. — Lux