THE LIFE OF BEA

A story of flowers? What could be better than the life of Bea?

Bea did not remember the beginning of her life but it had involved a lot of pampering. She knew this because in retrospect, her life as far as she did recall, had included a lot of looking after the other newborns although newly laid would probably be a more appropriate word to use. On her real entry into this world, when she had first seen the light of day with her five eyes, her task had been to clean out her cell, ready for its next occupant. Shoved into adulthood at the precious age of only 18 days, Bea then became the nurse to many others in their early stages of development. Nobody could know the hectic life of the dark interior – the many hours of walking from cell to cell, bringing the bread for survival, the mixture of pollen, honey and royal jelly that would ensure these grains of rice could turn into the ugly and white larvae – the hope for the next generation and the survival of the colony. Curled up in their fetal positions, Bea had capped them over with wax to take their chances and emerge as she had, five days later, ready to take up their own positions in the bustling colony. Bea knew this would be her turn to move on.

Promotion was simple and assured. There were no arguments, no debate over pay- just a progression to the next role. From nurse to house cleaner. Hardly a huge step, but more responsibility none the less. Now the tasks were immense. Bea, of course, started at the bottom. Death was a way of life and every one of her thousands of sisters and hundreds of brothers knew their time would come, some sooner than others. From time to time, Bea would stumble across a sister who had passed away and as undertaking came under her remit, that corpse would have to be removed. Dragged to the front door and unceremoniously thrown off the wooden edge onto the soft grassy floor, the deceased would be added to daily, making a small, dark pile of black bodies that would soon become fertiliser giving back into the environment they depended upon. Health was to be guarded at all costs and Bea would be called back to the nursery when larvae were not perfect, when disease had been detected or when death had come calling for a little one before its appointed time. Their removal was the saddest. A life – albeit that of an insect- had been snuffed out.

Hustling and bustling was the only way to obliterate these memories from her sesame seed brain. Bea knew it was highly unlikely that she, of all insects, would be chosen to be part of the Queen’s retinue. With thousands of other applications on the table, she stood little chance and it would only be by pure luck, that she would be included into the elite band of Girl Power that would tend to the Queen’s every whim, taking away the royal excrement and even digesting the royal food for her so she received it only as predigested baby food. She could hope. However, it would be better to concentrate on the task in hand.

Nectar and pollen had to be received and filed in the relevant hole. If Bea had known what a filing clerk were, she might well have seem the resemblance but all she knew was that this was food. She had yet to discover that, in the next few months, all her hard work, would be ripped away, never to be seen again and her precious larder of stores would be replaced by an empty frame. Did the unseen hands know how hard and how long that had taken? How many foragers had died of exhaustion in order for that golden liquid to be brought into the storehouse? It would have to be rebuilt and replenished again in order to live through the bitter winter – not that Bea would be around to see it. In the meantime, she did as she was genetically programmed to do – she built comb into a beautiful honeycomb framework of wax secreted from her own glands. It was a labour of love but one that Bea did automatically. Who was she to question the nature of things? This was how it was always done and would always be done in the world of nature. An unseen blueprint of how things worked embedded in her tiny being and all those who would follow her for generations to come.

Every now and then, Bea would come up against one of her brothers. Despite being related, she didn’t hold much of a love for them. They were large and lazy. They ate and ate and gave nothing back in return. Although she knew what they were good for and that the Queen depended on them to provide her with the means to lay eggs, Bea had no time for them. They could shove off for all she cared. She wished she could be around in the Autumn months when they would be made to shove off – rejected because their use was over, their ever munching jaws not wanted when supplies were low.

After 21 days of house maintenance duties, Bea moved on. The time was right and she felt a maturity in her small frame. Her sting was at its strongest and she placed herself at the entrance. By now she had become accustomed to the smell of her surroundings and instinctively knew who should be inside and who should not. Guarding and protecting the others was a part of life by now, but this was different. Bea finally had the glance of the outside world. It looked smaller than she had thought seen through the 30 x 4 cm gap that she stood by hour after hour. At times, she would use her wings to fan air into the hive, at others she would fan the aroma of the hive outwards, drawing her comrades back in, but always she was on guard, keeping watch for intruders, stinger at the ready. Nobody would pass on fear of death. Her own death.

At long last, the day had come when Bea reached the highest accolade. She was allowed to fly the nest as it were and take to the big wide world she had watched for the last few days. Standing on duty had been fine, but foraging was the utmost and the final job she would be given. Buzzing her way upwards into the warm summer skies, Bea felt a freedom she had not known in the cooped up interior with the thousands of her family. Messages from other flyers having been communicated through a waggle dance, giving her the directions and quantity of available nectar from a specific flower patch, she set off. Fortunately, her chosen area today was only a mile from home so many trips made it possible to bring home a suitable quantity of life giving sustenance. She was proud of her efforts, her yellow pollen baskets stuffed full, as she passed the guard bees’ inspection, gave her precious load to the worker bees and turned around unquestioningly ready for another trip.

Day after day passed and Bea came to know the flowers she preferred, the type of nectar and pollen she would bring back and she saw the patterns in the petals that humans were incapable of seeing. Although they saw the beauty and colour, they could not see the iridescence that Bea saw. They could not distinguish each individual flower in a patch though Bea could.

Six weeks had passed and the height of the summer had arrived. Bea was enjoying her new daily routine though she could feel that the journeys, especially the homeward bound ones, laden with weight on her aging legs, were becoming more and more difficult. She was glad she did not have to go as far as the five mile radius to work for the colony but could enjoy collecting in the local gardens. More and more she would take a short rest on a petal, or spend more time than normal collecting her load.

Until the day came in early July when Bea felt she could take it no longer. Taking just one more outward journey, she found herself exhausted after only a few metres. Spying a warm looking stone jutting out of the soil, she alighted for a few seconds rest. She waited and the seconds became minutes. Bea could not find It in herself to move. Laying motionless in the sunshine seemed a much better option than making the effort for the return. Closing her five eyes, she waited, exhausted, her job done. She had served her family faithfully and now she could cease…..

Inside the hive, another Bea chewed its way out of the waxed cell….