Folklore of the Bees

 

I am stoic as we begin the procedure--a complicated thaumic operation to alter my form, shrinking and molding my body into that of an insect--apis mellifera, the common honeybee.

It is not like anything I can describe, the rending of bone and liquescent flowing of flesh that characterizes the transformation process. First you must become as malleable as wax, my surgeon tells me--for this sort of operation is routinely done without anaesthetic. The process of re-shaping a body is simple, if time-consuming and (I am beginning to appreciate) intensely disorienting. My right arm goes curling off like a ribbon as the technicians adjust their equipment. Calibrating. I am being folded and flattened like ribbon candy, and my medical staff is just getting started.

 Forcing myself to keep still, I reflect on why I am doing this. It is the bees that draw me to alter my very form, so I may understand even the smallest fragment of their oral tradition...if such it may be called. For bee cultures have been disappearing across the globe--colony collapse, a poorly-understood phenomenon even today, with the rich insights yielded by nascent thaumotechnology. Somehow, impossible as it seems, something is *scattering* the bees from their homes. Their nests. Their rich and cosmopolitan group identities. So little is known, and there is not time to save it all. The scientists, the thaumotechnicians seek to help. We need bees, if we are to live as we have, and it is difficult to imagine yet how we will deal with their absence. Some go to study symptoms, seek answers, even render assistance. More than a few have openly interfered with the insect societies, in their attempts to prevent another collapse. Sometimes, the colonies dissipate anyway, in spite of all their trying. There are too many theories and not enough theorists. The data has not yet even begun to accumulate, and already there are not enough trained minds, enough graduate students and payed research assistants to sift through it all.

I confess my interest is somewhat different. I am going because, at the end of the day, I want to know who it is that we are losing. I am undecided as to whether my professional's code of ethics prohibits interference or not, but at the moment I am only going to study. It is important that we understand the bees as people, if we are to help them--and in so doing, help ourselves.

 Thus I subject myself to this arcane procedure, my form being twisted and kneaded and shaped. I am conscious throughout all of it, but perhaps not lucid as (my doctor informs me) my mass is being spread, "rolled" into flat sheets occupying an exceedingly great number of dimensions. Nobody has found thaumatechnology more perplexing than the physicists. The point of this, I am told, is to ensure that my bee body is correct in apparent weight.If I am simply compacted down directly, the best result I can expect is to be so massive for my size that I will crush through the structure of the hive. In a worst case, compacting my matter down could force the creation of nuclear matter inside my body. All of this is theory--nobody has ever tried it, since working theory is sufficiently ambiguous about the results. Thusly I am shaped and smeared across the interstices of higher-dimensional space.

 After I am smeared it is time for psychical therapy, to speedily acquaint me with my new form. In the meantime I huddle meekly on the tray, bewildered at my antennae, the way my eyesight no longer makes sense to me, the confusing jumble of six legs. "Hold still," the doctor urges. I do not think I could disobey if I wanted to.

 I cannot see what happens--my eyes are not yet adjusted to themselves, to this perceptual schema. Abruptly, everything resolves. Suddenly I know this body, as though it had been mine all along. I buzz my wings experimentall, try walking a few shaky steps. My eyesight, while different from before, makes such sense to me now that I cannot recall any other way of experiencing. I smell and see and hear and feel a thousand new sensations. Familiarity has been granted through telepathic computer programs; suddenly, operating this small form feels as natural and easy to me as anything ever did. It is time to begin my work.

 I awaken in the Seven Sunrise colony (motto: "From the sweat of our bellies, a new world is built!"). I have been put to sleep, my pheremones masked to blend in as a member. I have been placed in the hive during a routine cleaning, and now it is time to start recording.

 

--

The Honey-Revenants

The honeybee worldview is essentially apocalyptic in scope. The fortunes of the colony rise and fall with those of the mother, who lives such a short time (perhaps three years at the most), and with all the genetic and cultural heritage is passed down through the single princesses that become mothers of the new hives, and their attendants (who have short lifespans). Furthermore, while mothers are the longest-lived, their task is to continuously produce a new brood--a surprisingly complex occupation, as they must perform careful population management. Consequently, mother bees do not get out much.

With a mean lifespan of just two months, and a gestational period of twenty-one days inside their waxen cells, the sister bees do not have time to establish traditions per se. The moment they they stumble out of their six-sided cradle, they are put to work at once. The generation immediately previous serve as their teachers and foremen, so most actual acculturation comes in these interactions, or with members of their generational peer group. 

 Honeybees do not have a very long cultural memory, then--the stories that do persist in memory are ones about events that seemed significant to the whole hive--which means most of them are either disasters, or when swarms form to escort off a new princess (which double as the origin stories for new hives; honeybee matronymics would be quite complex if any of them remembered their grandmothers). Thus, the tales that last longest in a hive are the ones about great beginnings or endings.

 However, sister bees have lively imaginations, and tell one another a fantastic variety of tales. Thus, mythopoeisis is a common pastime, especially among the younger generations, who do their earliest work inside the hive. Some of these tales are intended to make sense of the world in which the bees find themselves, but most are simply to entertain and tickle the fancy of young minds trapped in bodies which shall wear out long before their time--for the oldest sisters leave the hive to forage, and are lost to predation, exposure or simply work themselves to death. One persistent image that recurs, from hive to hive and across generations, is that of honey-revenants. 

 "It was a long-ago time, many mothers of mothers ago, when the cleverest sisters had just learned how to build waxen things from the sweat of young daughters. It was an uncommon dry summer that year, and the sisters spoke of it with dread. Where were they to find enough pollen to eat? There were no flowers within sight, no bright faces tempting with their sweet nectar. Our ancestors were doomed! They organized flight after flight, even the youngest sisters next the daughter-bees fresh from their cells joining in the search!

"On one such flight went the cleverest of sisters, Six Honeysuckle. She was not only brave and studious, but sharp of mind. She organized her flight-sisters into a line, and had them join hands together and take off that way. Using one another's strength, the least among them boosted by the strongest, they were able to fly farther and higher than any had before them! Thus it was that Six Honeysuckle's team spotted, at long last, a meadow still rich in clover. It was far, but they were able to remember the way home and so they broke their line, descending upon the field with joy, laughing at their good fortune.

"Now, in those days it was common to bring some pollen back to share with your sisters--but wax being so new, they had not yet learned to make cells for storage. All the pollen was heaped into a great pile or shared with those nearby, and as to honey, why, it did not even exist--for nobody had thought to share nectar before!

"But little Six Honeysuckle was so clever, and could see wisdom where others did not. She realized that the nectar they all carried in their stomachs could also be shared--if only they had the sense to spit it up when they returned to the hive. Perhaps then there could be enough food for everyone. Thus, she bade the sisters to drink their fill of the sweet nectar from the clover all around them, and when they returned to the hive, she took some wax and began building a wall in the middle of the floor.

" 'What are you doing?', the perplexed sisters asked her. And the mother, fat and waddling with her attendants milling excitedly around, stopped to watch as well. Six Honeysuckle became increasingly aware that all eyes were on her, but she remained resolute in her task, building a basin as the audience grew larger and more interested. When she had finished the basin--and a great thing it was, large enough to contain many sisters!--she leaned forward over the edge and, to the astonishment of all, spit forth the nectar she had worked so hard to find! A buzzing commotion ran through the crowed, and one of the drones ran forward to ask her in a querulous voice if she was out of her mind."

 "I am not out of my mind, and with this none of us need go hungry again!," she said, triumphant. "Look!" She pointed forth into the basin, where the water was already evaporating out from the nectar she had parted with. As the hive watched, fascinated, it slowly congealed into a sticky, sweet goop--the first honey. "Build more of these basins, and give forth your nectar to them, and all will have enough to eat whenever we find flowers!" cried Six Honeysuckle, who was now quite lightheaded from the stress of speaking so loudly.

 The bees built more basins, and they came and left their nextar in the great basin built by Six Honeysuckle and those that came after. Soon the basins were so filled with honey, that the sisters had to start eating more just to keep them from overflowing!

"But all was not well with this design, and Six Honeysuckle was the first to show it. One day, when she was very old, she became exhausted in flight and--alas!--plunged into one of the basins she had helped to design. Before any could respond, she had sunk up to her head in the honey and drowned!  The other bees swarmed in consternation and sought to rescue the one who had given so much--but they could not reach her, without risking becoming trapped in the honey themselves.

"To their astonishment, Six Honeysuckle began to move! She creeped through the honey to the edge of the basin, where a crowd gathered eagerly, waiting for her to pull herself over the edge of the bowl. But woe! When she finally emerged, her face was mad, she would no longer buzz the hum of the hive, and her smell was covered over with sickly sweet! Golden goo dripped down her sides and face, stuffing her spiracles and clogging her mouthparts, which hung slack in a hideous, insane grin! She advanced upon her fellows, slaughtering them in mad rage! Though they loved Six Honeysuckle dearly, the crowd fought back with sobs as they tried to sting her to death, but she took a hundred stings and did not slow down!

"One brave little sister, scarcely more than a daughter herself, came forward to challenge the crazed thing that had emerged from the honey basin. Her name was Twelfth Peony, and though she was small and youthful she was clever, perhaps more than Six Honeysuckle herself had been! With a flitting of her wings and a taunting buzz, Twelfth Peony dashed from the hive, just out of the revenant's reach. The frightful beast beat its dripping wings then, and took to the air silently in pursuit. 

 "Twelfth Peony led the revenant on a long chase through the dry, hot summer day, as it stank of sweetness turned foul and called strange, frightful nonsense to her, shouting "Grim path!" and "Silent shambles!" and other bewildering things. The pair of them might have flown until Twelfth Peony lay dead from exhaustion, but the revenant could not move as quickly as she did, for its flight muscles had gummed over with the honey that filled its spiracles and made it a dead, insane thing. Twelfth Peony did not falter, did not reply, did not look back, even when she swore that the stickly limbs of her pursuer might any moment reach out to snatch her from the wing!

"Twelfth Peony's plan was bold, though, and utterly selfless. It was the swallow that saved the hive--hateful bird of summer, swift enemy on the wind that vanishes sisters as they go about their tasks. With a snip! snap! of its enormous beak, the bird snatched up the revenant, and--alas and alack!--poor Twelfth Peony too.

The sisters, back at the hive, had watched it all from the mouth of their hollow, and when Twelfth Peony and the revenant both disappeared down that gaping maw, there was great sadness. They had lost two of the best among them, and it was uncertain what they could do with the wonderful, but dangerous food source that Six Honeysuckle had provided. It took all their courage and strength not to give up the endeavor, but they were desperate for the food and it seemed an unbecoming waste, in the names of the poor clever ones who had saved the day, that they might discard the treasure and thus all the sisters who had been born in recent weeks. Thus, they came together and they mulled. For two whole days the bees did no work, simply pondering. None was as clever as Six Honeysuckle had been, but together, they hit upon a solution.

"That is why we now gather our honey into small pots, the same cells in which we birth daughters."