One Season in the Skin of a Male Bee
What does it feel like to be born a drone?
Males are born from unfecundated eggs, whether because your Mother didn’t find love in her nuptial flight (very rare) or because she chose not to put in contact the spermatheca with the oviduct when laying the egg.
Your workless butt
When you come out of your alveolus to beehive life, you go straight to eat. You are not really aware of it, but as you are not expected to work a single second in your life, you are a weight to the hive. To feed one male, the work of 5 to 6 working bees is needed. And there are roughly 10 000 of you guys in this home. You are voracious and rude, even when you walk in the corridors of the hive with your big fat body, you bump and bash unapologetically into everyone. You’re oblivious to the others.
Sometimes, you cross path with the Virgin Queen, and you don’t even realize she is your Quest and Destiny. Until you see her in flight, you don’t even think of Love.
Your quest for love
But that Day you sense a Princess flying up into the sky, something wakes up inside of you, and you buzz off to her pursuit. Now there’s a Meaning to your life. Now you can make fun of the sterility of all these little working bees who are always so busy and think they are so important. You have a chance to know Love. You don’t realize that if you get to your objective, the membrane separating Love and Death will shrink to disappearance. Your completion of your highest destiny is your sacrifice. With feelings of grandeur and glory, you fly up, up, up, hunting the Virgin Queen. She’s so string, so high, so unavailable. You are still far, far away, when another drone reaches her. Your chance is gone. Bummer. You are one of the 99,9% of losers. You go back to the hive, demoralized, and as a consolation lot, you eat tons of honey.
Nightly assassination
But the Spirit of the Hive commands that all unproductive, unnecessary hosts of the hive shall die. And so, a few days later, in the middle of the night as you were sleeping in your chamber, a crowd of your sisters come at you and sting you to death before you can even raise an antenna.
To discover your life if you had been born a simple honeybee or raised a Queenbee read this and that associated stories.
Note: This bee-story is inspired by Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee, a perfect example of the Ideal Book: it offers genuine learning of a totally different species, a change of perspective, it transmits enthusiasm and awe for life, while elevating spirits, heart, and soul. Although bees live a completely different life from ours, it is comparable in so many ways, and appears superior in some, as in their dedication to the community and to the future. Bees give us honey and wax, but the most precious presents they offer us are the harmony & abundance of the sunny days, and the humbling realization that there are other forms of intelligence out there.
If you love bees, there are many associations you can sustain, and if you have a garden, several things you can do to help your little friends thrive through hard times. Put cobblestones in a big bowl filled with water so the bees can drink without drowning, and sow flowers with high pollen potential.
