by Jean Gill
‘Let’s get this over with, then. What do I have to do?’
You have a stinger but it is of no use except to kill rivals. So that is what you must do. There can only be one queen and you are preparing her way. You must kill all those I showed you. The queen we have chosen to replace you is in a cell apart, safe.
‘How did you choose her?’
She is the only one we are keeping alive.
Mielitta gulped at the brutal logic of bees. What if she became surplus to requirement? She didn’t ask because she knew the answer.
She needs you to give her the best start. The hive is too weak for battles. Use your dart on each cell and inject the queen inside with venom. Otherwise they will all seek you out when they hatch and mortal combat will follow. You will weaken with each challenge and your chance of survival is poor unless you kill the queens in their cells.
‘Apart from the killing and poisoning, eating too much and being inspirational, is there anything else I must do, while I’m the Queen?’
You must take your mating flight as soon as possible and lay brood. Our population is low, the nurseries are bare and once the last grubs hatch, our number will drop below what can be sustained.
‘Mating flight. Explain.’ Mielitta liked the idea of flight but there must be ways to avoid both murder and mating.
This is what you were born for. Once in a lifetime, now, you must fly where the drones, the males, congregate and the fastest, bravest of them will put a lifetime’s seed in you so you can lay our colony back to health.
‘And how exactly does the seed get into me?’ Mielitta kept her tone as neutral as she could – otherwise she’d scream.
A successful drone will insert his endophallus –
‘Penis,’ realised Mielitta, feeling queasy.
–into your sting chamber and, if it is a good flight, maybe fifteen drones will succeed. One glorious flight will result in five years of laying eggs for your people.
Mielitta’s stomach heaved again. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I’m a virgin.’
Of course you are. The inner queen was astonished. This is your maiden flight. It is very rare that a queen would make a second such flight… only if no males are found the first time, or there is some weather catastrophe.
Mielitta tried again. ‘I can’t. It’s sort of – personal. And the first time should be special, with somebody you care about.’
‘Personal’ drew a bee blank. There was no such concept. ‘Somebody you care about’ drew a response, though not what Mielitta had hoped for.
Yes yes. We care about each other, about the hive. This is our purpose, that we live and die for each other. That is caring for each other. You care for us and we would die for you. You will do this for us so that we all live.
Put like that, how could she refuse? Mielitta felt trapped in her human viewpoint. Her bee body and her inner queen made her see how foolish her qualms were. What was one mating flight compared with the fate of tens of thousands of bees? She wasn’t even being asked to die for them. Just behave as a queen bee.
‘Will it hurt me?’ she asked.
Bee laughter sounded like little shivers. Oh no. You won’t be hurt, at all.
Chapter Thirteen
The hive was atingle with the news. Maiden flight, was all the buzz. Mielitta would have found it exciting if it she hadn’t been the topic of the buzz. It was bad enough that she had to lose her virginity to save thousands of bees and their future. If only it wasn’t so public. All this celebration was so mortifying. She didn’t feel like giving even one benevolent wave as she tottered onto the landing platform of the hive, adjusting to the bright light of day.
Calm, no wind. Dry, no rain. Warm, sunny, perfect, noted her inner bee with enthusiasm.
‘Just perfect,’ Mielitta echoed, without the enthusiasm. ‘So, I fly. Where to? I don’t see any drones.’ Perhaps there were none and she could return safely to hide in the dark centre of the hive, after a few swoops and turns in the air.
Scent the air with your antennae and you’ll smell them, their maleness, their invitation to play. Let your instincts guide you.
Mielitta had already realised that her antennae acted as her nostrils and were a thousand times more sensitive than her human nose. She vibrated them, separated out the familiar smells of her bodyguard, her worker bees, all female. Then she caught a waft of something different, musky, irresistible, and her little wings responded, lifting her up and away from the hive.
‘How will the males know why I’m there? Who I am?’
More bee-laughter. As you scent them, so they are waiting for you. They have been waiting for you and this moment all their lives.
That sounded romantic enough to cheer her up. Mielitta just hoped she didn’t smell of bananas as that had not gone down too well in her first encounter with bee-strangers.
I’ll be with you, reassured her inner bee, but Mielitta needed no help in flight. How many times had she loosed an arrow, felt its trajectory, felt it fly true and hit home? Now she was the arrow but one who could draw loops and arabesques in flight.
She wrote Maiden Flight by Mielitta in invisible letters as she wove an intricate path between the trees. Why fly in a straight line when you could have fun? She noted the colours of her bee vision: blue tree bark, purple leaves and flowers, white and ultraviolet concentric circles, targets to attract her bees. But she was a queen, above such distractions.
As the scent of male pheromones grew stronger, Mielitta could hear buzzing, see a black cloud hovering in a glade. She panicked, tried to fly back, but her inner queen pushed her relentlessly towards the attendant mass. She could feel their excitement throbbing in the air, anticipation building to fever pitch. She couldn’t help responding. Once in a lifetime, she told herself. And nobody in the Citadel need know.
‘What do I do?’ she asked but her wings already knew.
High, fast, dart around. Make them chase and try not to get caught. You will be, but only by the fastest, strongest, best!
Mielitta zoomed right through the cloud of drones, faltered as the male scent hit full strength. A leg lunged at her and she twisted away, down, sideways, up into the clear air, with the whole cloud in pursuit. She was not going to be caught so easily.
She felt like the ball in a children’s game, escaping one set of clutching hands only to narrowly escape another, as she made the most of all the directions available to her. Humans were so limited by gravity. Just as she was enjoying a side twist downwards, two legs grabbed her abdomen and dug in. She felt the weight of the drone on her back but she was helpless to dislodge him. She felt the thrust of his body, then something broke and he was gone, falling.
Oh stones, she thought, her heart thumping madly.
Keep flying, her inner queen insisted. They are closing on you.
Thank goodness she was so fit from training. Up she soared again, frustrating the drone nearest her and causing the mass to change direction yet again. And again.
Twelve times she was caught, bore the drone on her back, concentrated on maintaining her flight. Twelve times a male lost his grip, fell to the ground.
She was tiring now and she wanted to go home. The route to the beehive was clearly mapped in her mind and she felt no desire to zigzag or draw word patterns in her flight. Wearily, she made a beeline for home. And a large group of drones flew with her.
‘Why are they still here?’ She’d had more than enough now and was nervous at the thought of being caught again.
To join your hive. You have won their respect and that of worker bees from further afield too, so they are all joining us.
So it was that Mielitta returned to her hive tired and triumphant, accompanied by hundreds of bees who’d acquired her scent and sought permission to join her hive.
Mated queen returning, her new companions buzzed as they submitted to the scout bees’ investigations.
Mated queen returning, her bees buzzed as Mielitta alighted clumsily on the landing platform
, crawled towards an open door in the metal gateway.
Before she could reach the guard bee in the doorway, she was surrounded by a welcome party, who half-carried her to the doorway and through to the celebrations inside. Several fussed around her body, cleaning her.
See, the mating sign. Mated queen returned.
She felt a prickle as they completed their work around her tail and then she felt no different than she had before her flight.
She had gone out alone, done what was asked of her, returned with enough bees to swell the diminishing ranks of the hive until a new brood could be laid and hatched. Mated queen returned. There were just two questions to which she wanted answers before she glutted on royal jelly and nectar, then she would sleep.
‘What happened to the drones who mated with me?’ she asked her inner queen.
What happens to all successful fathers. They died. They were ripped apart in mating and died a glorious death.
Mielitta swallowed. Oh. ‘And what’s a mating sign?’
The penis of the last drone who mated with you. Each drone knocks out the sign of his predecessor and the last one remains as a sign of success to your people. They have cleaned it from you now.
Oh. ‘Perfect.’ Mielitta obediently opened her mouth and allowed the first of many tongues to feed her nectar and the regurgitated cream that was royal jelly.
You must kill the other queens.
‘Tomorrow,’ she promised. ‘I’m tired now.’
But the next day passed and two more. She still felt tired and she wanted to enjoy the new atmosphere in the hive, where bees had set to work again, each pursuing her own designated duties: cleaning, harvesting, feeding the hatched grubs. Even the drones contributed, fanning the hive with cool air as the heat outside increased during the day.
Then, five days after her maiden flight, Mielitta felt a new imperative. Ponderous, she waddled to the middle of a central comb cliff, flicked her long tail and laid fertilised egg after fertilised egg. She made a neat pattern in the comb, filling every cell as she spiralled outwards. Never had work felt so satisfying. After laying a thousand baby workers, she held back the fertilised eggs and laid a cluster of infertile ones at the bottom of the cliff. Drones, she thought with satisfaction. Without drones, no hive was complete. Any more than it could survive without a queen.
She was resting after a satisfying day’s work when the hairs on her antennae screamed Danger!
Chapter Fourteen
A body equal to her own in size hurled itself at her and she was knocked off all her feet. Pinned in a wrestling hold by her assailant, Mielitta rolled downwards, the claws on her back legs clutching at the comb in an effort to slow her descent.
‘Drone?’ she thought, confused. Worker bees were smaller than she was and would have no cause to hurt her, now she was accepted and laying well.
Bite your head off, impostor! screeched the mass of hate that gripped her and squeezed ever tighter.
‘Help!’ Where were her courtiers? Her bodyguard? Mielitta could feel the presence of her bees but they merely watched, impassive, awaiting the outcome.
Told you so. A queen has hatched from one of the cells you ignored. Her inner queen’s smugness provided the jolt of extra strength needed to break free and Mielitta had a microsecond to take stock before the rival queen’s sting jabbed towards her abdomen.
To the death! The new-hatched queen hurled her battle-cry. She was still shiny and golden from the royal jelly in the cell, fresh and full of purpose. Mielitta had been laying eggs all day and was tired. She was still clumsy, still discovering the potential of her bee’s body. But she had years of training on her side and this newcomer had no more knowledge of her own body than did Mielitta, however strong her instincts might be.
‘To the death,’ agreed Mielitta, arching her back to jab with her own sting at her foe. While the other was off guard, she clamped down on a leg, chewed it off and spat it out. Hardly classic tactics but she must use the weapons she had. Strong mandibles, stronger than those of her workers; amazing range of vision, above and to the sides, so she would always know the position of her attacker; and her poison dart. Their initial clinch had shown Mielitta that she was physically weaker and must avoid being crushed.
Her opponent had clearly come to the same conclusion and threw herself once more at Mielitta. This time she was prepared. She lowered her head to bite, curling down below the grasping forelegs. At the same time she curved her back and kicked at the other queen’s exposed abdomen. Kicking with six legs was complicated. The soft pads on her back legs did little damage so she concentrated on hooking skin with her forelegs.
Losing a leg seemed if anything to have increased her enemy’s fury and Mielitta took a bite to her neck. Having her head bitten off suddenly seemed an all too probable result and she felt her strength waning as she clambered around the space cleared by her people.
She was going to lose. A killer glare fragmented a hundred times in the hexagons of her huge front eyes told her she was doomed. A drop of venom had already dripped from the sting-tip, aimed at her, approaching – and she was alone, as always. With only one arrow.
Mielitta was not merely bee but also a trained archer and she had to get back to the Citadel. She had not been through all this, the mating flight and egg-laying, to lose her life to some petulant adolescent! Mielitta appraised her surroundings. ‘Make the ground your friend,’ she reminded herself. They had wrestled and rolled their way to the floor of the hive, cutting off one potential direction of movement.
She timed the moment carefully, dropped onto her back so her rival’s sting embedded itself harmlessly in a pollen ball, stored neatly in the cell wall. Then Mielitta curved upwards to her maximum, jabbed again and again.
The other queen had already withdrawn her sting since there were no barbs on their weapons but she could not change position quickly enough and the poison took hold as Mielitta continued to use her dart. She was still stabbing when the body dropped on top of her.
Still nobody came to help. ‘What’s new?’ she thought as she heaved and rolled, a little at a time until she could crawl out and proclaim her victory.
As she piped her sovereignty in her shrill queen bee voice, her people rejoiced with frantic wing flutters and celebration. Then they all went back to work. Long live the Queen.
Mielitta also went back to work, her heart hard and determined. She crawled along the base of the hive and she could hear their cries as they sensed her approach, the rival queens waiting to emerge from their cells.
Murderess! Poisoner! Save us! they called. Every bee in the hive felt their cries and carried on working cheerfully. All was as it should be. The Queen was strong. Long live the Queen.
Mielitta felt nothing but her duty. She stopped first at a peanut-shaped cell where crunching sounds told her that the new queen was eating her way out, about to emerge. All sounds stopped while Mielitta stood close to the cell. A pretence of sleep, of absence, of invisibility: ploys with which Mielitta was all too familiar. Nobody used Mielitta’s own tricks against her. She crawled on the cell wall, stabbed it with her poison dart, felt the point enter the bee inside. She stabbed again to make sure and moved on.
Systematically, she used her stinger on every queen cell she passed until there was no longer any cry of Bite your head off.
She stood still, shaking, and was immediately surrounded by bees, expressing their concern by grooming and feeding her. She felt the reassurance of their antennae combing debris off her body. She refused to think about what kind of dirt her body might have accumulated. She opened her mouth obediently, accepted the mash they regurgitated for her. She might be queen but she was helpless in so many ways compared with these capable worker bees.
Well done, her inner queen told her. Now you do understand.
Mielitta did understand. Without her, a strong queen, laying well, the hive died. But if she wasn’t strong enough, or laying well enough, a challenger could replace her and her people would be j
ust as happy. She was the most important bee within the hive but not as an individual. She, Mielitta, was replaceable. The community needed one queen, hundreds of drones, fifty thousand worker bees, all of them replaceable.
‘What happens to the drones who don’t mate?’ she asked.
They are expelled from the hive in the autumn so as not to use up winter provisions when we don’t need them. The queen lays new drones in the spring.
‘They die outside.’
Yes.
‘But don’t they try to get back into the hive, to live?
They try. But the guard bees defend the entry, prevent them.
‘Poor drones.’
They live purposeful lives. Is that not what matters? Longer lives than worker bees, not as long as the queen.
Mielitta slept all night and recovered to lay another thousand eggs the next day. And another thousand the day after that.
‘Six hundred and seventy-two,’ she was saying, on duty for the third day, when a shadow above her head alerted her to a new presence, lumbering towards her. She steeled herself for another fight.
No, not this time. This is the chosen one. She knows you, her inner queen assured her.
It was indeed a newly emerged queen and Mielitta curved her back, suspicious, ready to sting.
Thank you, said the other. This was more promising than Bite your head off but Mielitta was still wary.
The Young Queen continued, Your scent is everywhere and I have grown in the shelter of your strength. You have saved my people.
Mielitta felt her sting rise in a little stab of jealousy and she controlled herself with difficulty.
I know, the other acknowledged. It goes against instinct to hold back your weapon against a rival. But we are not rivals. There are even hives in which two queens live together, in which one hands over peacefully. It is known so it is possible. And we are a new breed of queen. You must return to your other world and I must take on my duties with the added burden of our link.
