In the process, her second baby is killed, and Flora goes into depression.įall approaches, and after a lean summer the bees are fearful that the winter will kill them off. One day she returns to “The Visitation,” which is the hive-myth name for when the hive’s human owner visits and takes honey from the bees. This discovery arouses suspicion, but she keeps the secret and goes about her business foraging, because fall is coming and the hive must settle as soon as it can.

In this process she discovers three dead Sage bodies, all young. Soon Flora lays a second egg, and finds a new creative place to hide it.

Although Flora could have allowed her gifts and recognition to cause her some well-earned pride, she is careful to help others, show attention to the marginalized bees, and careful to protect her thoughts and actions from the Sage’s notice. Mournful at her loss, she learns to forage for nectar and becomes one of the hive's most productive and powerful foragers. For anyone else to do so is treason.įlora lays her egg and smuggles it into the nursery, where it quickly dies of starvation. Flora loves the queen and is very devoted to her, but in her presence she learns the queen is ill after that, when Flora finds herself able to lay eggs, she is burdened with two terrible secrets, for only the Queen may lay eggs. Her courage in defeating the most hated of foes allows her an audience with the Queen.ĭuring her time in the Queen’s chambers, Flora learns the history of the hive through a series of six scent-panels, which use sensory memories to communicate the myths surrounding their species. When she is sent back to her own area, she bravely confronts an attacker-a wasp. Since she can produce royal jelly, she is allowed to work in the nursery for a while, until the fertility police’s strict policy on aberrations causes her too much distress to stay near the babies any longer.

Flora is allowed to leave her kin and try different parts of the hive, which is almost unheard of. In a place where most bees with deformities or aberrations are disposed of, Flora is spared by Sister Sage, the most powerful bee of the most powerful kin, the priestesses.

However, due to a few evolutionary perks, Flora is larger and more powerful than her kin, and she can speak. The main character is Flora 717, who is born into the lowest caste of bees, the sanitation workers. However, with a dash of creative storytelling, she magnifies the society into a dystopian nightmare. “The Bees” by Laline Paull is a fascinating look into the most industrious of natural orders, a beehive.

The bees paull