Delia Gunning is a Beekeeper who appeared in a Johnathan Creek mystery. I’m on the record of liking it when Beekeepers use their bee-related skills to get involved in investigating mysteries and whatnot. Sadly, that’s not what happens here.

Delia is the editor of a small town’s daily newspaper who keeps bees on the side. She’s got at least three hives and makes enough honey that she can give it away as gifts. This all speaks well of her beekeeping success, but it all comes crashing down when she falls in love with the wrong guy, a guy who is a magician! And also he’s a murderer.

To abet this murderer, Delia arranges to have the victim apparently caught on video alive after going missing, so nobody thinks she’s really been killed. This is done by filming the footage before the murder. She prints up a false front page to a newspaper, has that paper visible in the background on the video, and then makes sure that news comes true on the day after the killing. Thus, a headline about a swarm of bees disrupting a city council meeting comes true when she releases some bees at that meeting on the day in question. Sheer genius in its simplicity. Sure, some of it might have been the magician’s idea, but Delia is the one who pulled it off and, given her skills both journalist and apiarist, I’m inclined to give her credit.

But it ends poorly for Delia anyway, when the killer turns on her, because she is the only one who can turn him in. He pushes her down some stairs and attempts to bludgeon her to death, only stopping because the show’s titular investigator arrives in time.

Two Honeycombs out of Five. Kind of clever and good at lateral thinking perhaps, but also led astray by love of a bad boy.