The Secret Life of Bees
Questions on Chapter 1 - 14
Chapter 1
1. As the novel opens, what year is it?
2. What town is Lily originally from?
3. How old was Lily when her mother died?
4. When did the bees come?
5. What does Lily call her father? Why does she call him this? Quote from the passage.
6. Name five things Lily hoped to get from charm school and what really happened?
7. What token of love does Lily recall Rosaleen giving her at Easter, which her father wanted to
get rid of?
8. Who was Lily’s best friend at school?
9. What is Lily forbidden by T. Ray to do when she is on the job at the Peach stand?
10. Where did Lily hide the tin box and what was included in this box?
11. What did Lily’s father do as punishment and what did he call it?
12. What is Rosaleen planning to do in town when she and Lily encounter the rude white men?
13. What did Rosaleen take from church?
14. Name three reasons the police gave why they arrested Rosaleen.
Chapter 2
1. Who caused Rosaleen’s head injury and why?
2. After T. Ray retrieves Lily from jail, he tells her that Rosaleen will likely be murdered by
_______?
3. What does Lily see in her bedroom that prompts her to run away?
4. Why was Lily so insistent that Rosaleen leave the hospital?
1
5. Where does Lily plan to go once she and Rosaleen leave the hospital?
6. When Lily shows Rosaleen the picture that says Tiburon, S. Carolina on it, what does
Rosaleen comment on?
7. What did T. Ray say to Lily about her mother?
8. How does Rosaleen remember Lily’s mom looking like?
9. What was Lily thinking of when swimming in the water?
Chapter 3
1. After dropping them near Tiburon, what does the man in the pickup truck give Lily and
Rosaleen for dinner?
2. Who does Rosaleen say she dreamed about during the night she and Lily spent by the
riverbank?
3. What does Lily steal from the store?
4. While inside the Frogmore General Store, where does Lily see the image of the Black Mary?
5. Who is August Boatwright?
Chapter 4
1. What is August Boatwright wearing the first time Lily sees her?
2. Describe May Boatwright.
3. Describe August Boatwright.
4. Why are the sisters’ names so special?
5. What appears odd about May’s behavior?
6. What song does May sing whenever she is upset?
7. What reason does Lily give August for running away?
8. What colour is the Boatwright house painted?
9. Where did Lily and Rosaleen stay while with the Boatwright sisters?
Chapter 5
1. Describe the stone wall.
2. What was the mystery of “Oh Susanna?”
2
3. What were June’s talents?
4. What did Lily overhear June and August talk about one night on the back porch?
5. Why was Rosaleen seen as jealous by Lily?
6. How and why did April die?
7. What is the historical event that took place on Sept. 15 in Birmingham?
8. What does Lily put in the wall?
9. August explains to Lily that her religion is partly self-invented, but also partly
_____________________________.
Chapter 6
1. Is Neil and June married?
2. Who are the Daughters of Mary?
3. What washed up on the bank?
4. According to the legend, why was it assumed that the statue was that of Jesus’ mother,
Mary?
5. What does August call the Black Mary statue?
6. After the worship ceremony where Lily faints, the group sees a television report about? (1)
7. What was the “amazing secret” Lily stumbled upon?
8. Why is August critical of the NASA mission?
Chapter 7
1. How long have they been at August’s house now?
2. Who is Zach Taylor?
3. Who was August to Zach?
4. Why does Lily dread going to dinner?
5. What does Zach want to do when he finishes with school?
6. Why does Lily break down crying with Zach?
7. Why was Rosaleen leaving the honey house?
8. What are Neil and June fighting about?
9. Who is Willifred Marchant?
3
10. What book does Lily see August reading, which makes her panic that August knows the truth
about her mother?
11. What gift did Zach bring Lily?
Chapter 8
1. What month would have been Lily’s special month and why?
2. Why does August use the Black Madonna on her honey jars?
3. What educational background do June and August have?
4. Explain the title of the book as it applies to the story lines. And name the various secrets
bees have?
5. What event surrounded the arrival of Jack Palance?
6. What one question does Lily ask her father and what’s his response?
7. What upset Lily about the Father’s Day card she made him when she was nine?
8. To whom does Lily pay a visit the night she goes to the house to use the bathroom?
Chapter 9
1. What playful event broke the tension between June and Lily?
2. What event made Lily believe even stronger that her mother may have been in the pink
house?
3. What prevents Lily from telling August the truth?
4. How did May learn about Zach’s arrest?
Chapter 10
1. What request does Lily make of May?
2. What were the circumstances surrounding the release of Zach from jail?
3. Why does Zach blame himself for what happened to May?
4. What was the reason behind covering the bee hives?
5. What does August explain is the reason for rituals?
6. Why is June afraid to marry Neil?
7. What is significant about the bees buzzing around the day of May’s burial?
4
Chapter 11
1. How much time has past since Lily ran away from home?
2. How had Zach changed since his arrest?
3. Why couldn’t June go for a ride with Neil?
4. What happened that later allowed her to go?
5. What story does Lily reveal to Zach about the boys back home?
Chapter 12
1. What same poem did Lily and her mother have to learn for school?
2. Explain the quote, “August chewed more than she bit off.”
3. Who is Tica Tee?
Chapter 13
1. What question about her mother torments Lily?
2. What is the reason that the Daughters spread honey all over the statue?
3. What items (be specific) does August share with Lily?
4. What one item that August shares, helps heal Lily’s broken heart?
Chapter 14
1. What new venture was Zach undertaking in the fall?
2. From whom does August say Lily can get her strength, consolation, and rescue?
3. What is the only purpose grand enough for human life?
4. How did T Ray find Lily?
5. What item on Lily caught T Ray’s attention and why?
6. What utterance snapped T Ray out of his trance?
7. What finally made T Ray decide to leave Lily with the women?
8. Who is Clayton and how is he helping Lily and Rosaleen?
9. Who is the wall keeper and why?
5
6
Memo
Chapter 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
1964
Sylvan South Carolina
Four
In the summer of 1964
T Ray ‘because Daddy never fit him’
 How to walk
 Pivot
 Sit with your ankles
 How to get in a car
 How to pour tea
 How to take of gloves
7. A chick
8. She had no friends
9. She was not allowed to read
10. She buried it in the orchard. It included her mother’s white gloves, a picture of her mothered wrapped in
wax paper and a wooden picture of Mary.
11. Martha Whites – he would pour a heap of grits on the floor where she then needed to kneel on it for an
hour.
12. She was registering to vote
13. fan
14. Assault, Theft, Disturbing peace
Chapter 2
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Franklin Posey. Because Rosaleen did not want to apologize for spilling her jug of snuff juice on their feet.
Franklin Posey
The empty bee jar.
Because the men are going to come back and kill her.
Tiburon S.C
She commented on The Virgin Mary that was black and not white. And said that she can go to her grave
now because she has seen it all.
7. That she left Lily and him way before she died. And that she only came back to fetch a few things when the
accident happened.
8. Sad
9. Suitcase on the floor, a face she could not quite see and cold cream.
Chapter 3
1. Cantaloupes
7
2.
3.
4.
5.
Martin Luther King Jr.
‘Red Rose Snuff’
On a honey jar
She is a colored lady who makes and sells the honey
Chapter 4
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Rimless glasses, green chiffon scarf tied onto her belt
Wears no shoes, short braids, depressed,
Very black skin, red heart tattoo on her breast, humble, wears glasses,
Their mother loved spring and summer.
When she hears something negative, she instantly starts to hum and the way she grinned made Lily feel
that she was not a normal person.
‘Oh susana’
She said that her mother died when she was little, and her father died in a tractor accident. And that she
did not have any other family so they would have sent her away.
Flamingo pink
In the honey house, that was a converted garage painted flamingo pink like the rest of the house.
Chapter 5
1. They refer to it as the wailing wall. Similar to one in Jerusalem. Where the Jewish people usually go to
mourn. So, this wall is a place for her to deal with her suffering. She writes everything that is heavy for her,
her your prayers and suffering on scraps of paper and stick it in between the stones.
2. If you keep things on a happy note May is fine bad when you start to mention negative or anything she
does not want to hear she starts humming which helps her not to cry as much.
3. June played the cello
4. .They were busy talking about her. Telling each other that she was lying to them. Not telling them the
truth about why she is there.
5. Because Lily was spending so much time with August and shared things with August and not with
Rosaleen.
6. When she was thirteen years old she had terrible depression. And when she was fifteen she took her
fathers shotgun and shot herself.
7. It is where four little angels died.
8. She tore of a piece of paper and wrote her mothers name on it ‘Deborah Owens”.
9. Catholic
Chapter 6
1.
2.
3.
4.
June and Neil like each other. But June will not marry him and she won’t let him go either.
Queenie, Lunelle, Mabelee and Cressie.
A wooden figure of a woman.
Because she has seen a lot of suffering in her lifetime. And she was sent to them on the same waters that
brought them here in chains. To them it felt like she knew how they suffered.
8
5.
6.
7.
8.
Our Lady of chains
The moon landing
That when you fainted it was possible for you to exit life without actually dying.
Because she says that it won’t be just mother earth anymore they will not stop here now. They will make a
science project out of mother earth.
Chapter 7
1. 8 days
2. He was the person that helped August usually with the bees and the honey.
3. She was his godmother
4. Because she felt that June resented her. She wasn’t a very nice person to Lily.
5. He wants to become a lawyer.
6. She breaks down crying because she liked him. She liked his one dimple and the way he made her feel.
7. So that she could move up to May’s room. Because May is scared to sleep alone.
8. Because June did not want to marry him and could not give him an answer why she cannot marry him.
9. A celebrated lawyer
10. Jane Eyere
11. A green notebook with rosebuds on the cover
Chapter 8
1. October, because the weather is good and her initials would be O.O
2. Because when the daughters of Mary saw the label for the first time their eyes lit up. They realized that
something divine can come in darker skin. And everyone needs a God who looks like them.
3. They went to school and to college to study teaching
4. Lily loved that bees had a secret life not a lot of people knew about just like the secret life she had.
Secrets of bees; Sounds help them cool down their hive.
Every bee has a role to play.
There are different types of bees.
The queen bee and her attendants
5. He is a movie star, his sisters lived there and he was bringing a colored lady with him to the movie theater.
6. She asked him if he knew what her favorite color was? And he responded by saying that he knows one
thing and that is when he sees her he is going to tear her behind to pieces. NOT ANSWERING THE
QUESTION SHE ASKED.
7. He left it exactly where she gave it to him and he peeled a peach on top of it and the skin and pit stuck on
it.
8. Lady Of Chains.
Chapter 9
1. Lily started by spraying June with the hose, where June then hosed her back. Both of them holding the
hose together started to wrestle where June started laughing at Lily. Where they ended up laughing
together.
9
2. When she joined May in the kitchen. May was busy laying out a path of small pieces of marshmallow and
graham crackers for the roaches to safely escape. And she remembered that T. Ray told her that her
mother did the same thing.
3. She feared that she would be cast out of the pink house if she told the truth. And she was scared to tell
the truth.
4. Zach’s mother phoned the pink house where May answered the phone. She asked May why no one said to
her that Zach was in jail.
Chapter 10
1. Lily wished that May would look up her mother and say to her that she saw her and that she is away from
T. Ray. And that she would like a sign where Lily’s mother lets her know that she loves her.
2. The girl who sells tickets at the theater saw what happened that afternoon and finally came forward. She
told the police that it wasn’t Zach who threw the bottle.
3. Because he said if he just told the truth then he would not be in jail and May would not have killed herself
then.
4. A long time ago beekeepers always covered their hives when a family member died.
5. It reminds them that life gives way into death and then death turns around and gives way into life.
6. Because Melvin Edwards backed out of their wedding a few years back. And now she is scared to love
again. She might be afraid something like that can happen again.
7. Lily says at the very end of Chapter 10 ‘souls flying away’ and this is significant because this can mean that
May’s soul has finally left her body as well.
Chapter 11
1.
2.
3.
4.
It has been over a month
Zach was more heated, charged and angry.
Because she said they had to much work to do to prepare for Mary Day.
Neil asked her again to marry him in front of August, Rosaleen and Lily where she gave in to all her fears
and said yes.
5. That the boys back home were busy fishing when she visited the pond. They had all their fish they caught
on a string. Whereafter, they held Lily down and put the string of fish around her neck. So tight that she
could not take it of. Where she tried to go in the water to safe them but she was to scared to go in deeper
than her knees. So she did not save them and they all died on her chest.
Chapter 12
1. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.
2. It means that August took on too much. Where she wanted to do more than she actually could.
3. Tica Tee was Lily’s mother’s imaginary friend.
Chapter 13
1. Why her mother did not bring her with when she left to go to August. Why her mother left her. Did her
mother not love her.
10
2. The churches used to bath their special statues in holy water as a way to honor them. Honey is a
preservative. It seals over the hive to keep it safe. So when they bath her in honey they are trying to
preserve her and keep her safe for another year. They are doing it physically but emotionally in their
hearts as well.
3. Gold and white striped hat box which had in it some of her mother’s belongings. Inside was her mother’s
pocket mirror, a hairbrush with a wooden handle, a gold pin shaped like a whale, a black book and a small
oval picture.
4. The oval picture of her and her mother. That picture was the sign Lilly needed to know that her mother
really loved her.
Chapter 14
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
He was going to go to an all-white school.
From her own heart and Mary
Not just to love but to persist in love.
One day when delivering honey to Mr Clayton Forrest Lily made a collect call to T. Ray. When following up
on the collect call to find out where Lily was Mr Clayton himself did not tell him but his secretary Mrs Lacy
told him.
Her mother’s pin that she wore.
Daddy!
Because he needed a way of him not thinking of Lily as Deborah. And he knew that they would take very
good care of her.
Clayton is the town lawyer. He is helping them sort out the things which happened back home. He is
trying to get the charges dropped against Rosaleen because of the injustices against her.
Lily is the wall keeper now. Because she keeps it fed with prayers and fresh rocks.
11