"A Tale of a Girl's Transformation into a Honeybee"

Runner-up

by Makiko Izumida (Hyogo)

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13. Summer Flowers

For days after that, I could think nothing but carrying nectar to the seemingly deserted, lonely castle.
In the nursery, indoor worker bees were busy nursing larvae. They were the larvae that hatched from the eggs laid by the queen that had hived off with many of our fellow bees.
Several days passed. The nectar cellar gradually became more abundant. As the rainy season was drawing near, gloomy cloudy weather prevailed. So we worker bees were anticipating the wedding of the new queen with bated breath.
On an unusually fine day, a swarm of male bees flew away and the bell at the top of the castle was ringing to mark the celebration.
I ran up to the eighth floor. I joined the group to see the queen off among the attendant bees. On this particular day, everyone on the eighth floor is allowed to enter the room of the queen and look out through the large windows to await her departure.
Soon the queen spread her splendid wings and flew away into the sky through the center of the open ornament of Chinese milk vetch flowers.
"Now we were relieved."
"Congratulations."
"Congratulations."
I exchanged words of congratulations from the bottom of my heart with other worker bees.

We were relieved just for a while. The rainy season has come. We could not collect nectar during the days of endless rain.
In the nursery, the new queen was laying one thousand to two thousand eggs a day. We required a huge amount of nectar to nurse the larvae that were hatching one after another from her eggs.
We flew away during a short lull in the rain. We often returned to the castle empty-handed because of the hard rain that started up again. Some of our fellow bees end up getting killed in this type of sudden heavy downpour.
"Ah, I'm hungry."
"I'm starving."
Such grumbling was becoming more frequent among the bees that would never complain under normal circumstances. The nectar was for nursing; we could use only a small fraction of it. I was hoping that the rainy season would end soon. My stomach was so empty, I was really beginning to think that I would really be breathing my last .
Of course, I didn't actually put into words what I was feeling, but they were grueling days nonetheless.
Lucky news. I made a new friend. On a dark day when the hard rain was hitting the castle, I was close together with a bee in Room Q that screamed in reaction to the terrible thunder. The thunder may be a real terror for the honeybees that are usually self-possessed. When the thunder had subsided, my companion from Room Q and I smiled at each other with great relief.
Then the two of us became good friends.
I had been thinking that I would call the bee that was to become my friend the second Q, following the first Q. But I was so busy that I had no time to make friends since losing the first Q. But now, the rainy season had brought me a new friend.
I decided not to call my new friend the second Q. I called her Miss Q instead.
Only humans like the idea of assigning names. To Miss Q, I was just Q, that's all. And she was just Q, too.
The thunder signaled the end of the rainy season. A bright sun, after a long absence, started to shine over us again. The season gradually turned into summer.
Hearing news from Room P next door that flowers of pumpkin and cucumber were beginning to bloom, I flew away from the castle with fellow bees in the early morning.
As I was always with the first Q, Miss Q always followed me.
We flew lightly with our wings swishing in the air.
I eventually found a pumpkin field and called out to my fellow bees,
"Let's descend."
And I prepared to go into a nosedive.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Miss Q uttered with joy just behind me.
Both of us went down and landed on the beautiful large true yellow pumpkin flowers shining in the morning sunshine.
Miss Q, not accustomed to the work of a field bee, seemed to hesitate with a lot of pollen.
I started to collect pollen in front of Miss Q, in an attempt to show her a good example of how it was done.
But this time, the situation was different from the case of the poppy flowers. I moved my legs on a stamen of a large flower and my face and my eyes were covered with pollen like confectioners sugar sprinkled on pastries. My big eye was a compound eye for keeping a watch on the distant scenery. The ocellus, however, was for ensuring that the immediate area was safe.
I continued to act as the senior, calmly making a ball of pollen for the basket in my hind legs. Since there was too much pollen, the work was not going smoothly.
Where was Miss Q?
I raised my face a little bit from the flower.
Miss Q had diligently gone off to work on the next flower. She was not covered with pollen.
This was not in the least a good example of how it was done.
I was flustered and flew to another flower to conceal my failure.
"You shouldn't go there."
A bee about to fly from a nearby flower exclaimed,
"Anything wrong?"
Miss Q raised her face.
I saw a black insect that looked like a tank crawling out of my flower.
"Yeow"
I screamed unconsciously.
"Ah, a gold bug! Withdraw immediately..."
Miss Q advised me and I flew back to the original flower.
It didn't seem like I was the senior in this outing. Although Miss Q had not been taught by anyone, she was very knowledgeable nonetheless. A natural-born honeybee has excellent instincts, I thought.
I had been feeling helpless for such a long time since losing the first Q, but now felt a sense of relief at having become friends with Miss Q.
From then on, I would be able to depend on Miss Q's intuition.
We collected and carried a lot of pollen and came back later to collect more. We worked hard, spending the morning hours in the pumpkin field until the flowers withered.
In this way, on the next day and the following day, we flew outside the castle looking for summer flowers.
But bad things also occur in the life of a honeybee. As they get busy, more and more worker bees die from overwork. Or a number of fellow bees that land on fields sprayed with agricultural chemicals end up dying in agony. One evening, a honeybee that was on her way back was eaten by a toad near the castle.
I thought that anything could happen to me at any time. I had to be alert at all times.






14. The Nectar Thief

Thanks to the work by the honeybees on long days of summer, the nectar cellar was full again and the castle was animated.
While I was performing a notification dance in the hall to report that I had found pollen and nectar, suddenly a strange smell filled the hall. The dance stopped all of a sudden. Everyone stopped dancing.
The strong smell became thicker across the hall. One after another, the honeybees near the stairway started falling. The bees that stopped dancing were motionless.
At that time the elevator came down in the hexagonal glass column.
What had happened?
The door opened. The queen was not there. Only several attendant bees were aboard.
The bees said unanimously.
"Everybody. This is an order from the queen. Return to your rooms and lock your doors. "
The attendant bees repeated this announcement a couple of times and then went up in the glass column.
There was an uproar in the hall and those that could move ran into the corridor. But everyone was silent.
What's going on?
I went into the corridor and got out of the castle without returning to the third floor. I knew it was selfish behavior on my part, but I couldn't help but investigate what was going on.
The grassy plain was not in front of the castle. "What...?"
There was a bad smell here as well.
I spread my wings and flew up immediately.
I flew up to a high altitude where the air was free of the smell. From there I could see the garden of my house.
While not knowing what was going on, I was hovering in the air, my wings swishing all the while.
"Ah!"
I said unconsciously.
My father and my grandfather, wearing hand protectors and black masks, were crouched in front of a beehive in the garden.
I went into a nosedive. I landed on a tall tree and looked down on the scene below.
The guys in black masks were taking a honeycomb out of the beehive whose lid had just been opened. There was some smoke floating in the air around the beehive. My grandmother was walking up to the barn carrying in her hands a smoking device that had just been used.
I could see. The smell in the castle was the smell of smoke from the smoking device. My father and grandfather had blown the smoke into the hive to make the honeybees faint, and in the meantime, were taking out a honeycomb to place it on a nectar collector which rotates the comb, force the honey stored by the honeybees out with a centrifugal force.
"That is to say...?"
My imaginary honeybee castle was one of the beehives at my house. The strange smell that permeated the castle was the smoke my father and grandfather blew into the hive.
Yes, I was beginning to understand. This is why I did not find my house however farther I flew. This was just above the castle in the story.
How complicated my story had become!
"But wait a minute."
I murmured.
"I could become a human now."
Unable to hold myself back after seeing my father, grandfather and grandmother, I buzzed onto the garden from the tree in the midst of the smoke.
I flew close to my father and
cried:
"Dad, grandpa." But the guys in masks didn't notice me. It seemed that I could not make myself understood in the honeybee language.
Having no other choice, I flew close to my grandmother and hovered quivering my wings.
"Whoops."
My grandmother, fearing she was getting stung, suddenly brushed me away and shook her head. I was a tiny honeybee. My grandmother's hand was like a huge glove.
"Grandma, its me. Its me."
I cried desperately but her hand brushed me away with strong rush of wind. She pointed the smoking device she held in her other hand upward at me.
Squirt.
"Aaah."
I cried out as everything began to get dark. I had lost consciousness.

How many hours had passed?"
I awoke in the grassy field in front of the castle. I saw dozens of honeybees that could not get up and honeybees that just awoke. I shook my dizzy head and managed to stagger to my feet. I crawled to the entrance of the castle like the day I was caught by a praying mantis.
The gatekeeper seemed to have been out up to that moment, gazed at me with a vague expression.
I stumbled to the nectar cellar in the first place. The honeybees in the stairway gradually got up and gazed me with a vague expression. In the nectar cellar, a lot of bees started to writhe, unable to get up.
"Are you all right?"
I called to them and helped honeybees get up one by one. Honeybees in the nectar cellar received the largest amount of smoke, I think.
But, how come? This is the first basement...
When I thought that way, a bee that staggered pointed at the periphery of the ceiling and said,
"That part opened suddenly and strong smell invaded."
"Opened?"
I was surprised. I arranged built-in windows in the ceiling of the nectar cellar on the first basement so as to take in the light from ground. The ceiling opened though. This is a fault in my story.
"Yes. I have experienced the same thing,"
said a senior field bee from the Room P that have worked long.
"Yes. Whenever a large amount of nectar is stored in the castle, this will happen."
responded a bee.
"Then what will happen?" I asked.
"Nothing. Everything is restored. Everybody will become vigorous again."
"And the nectar cellar?"
"Vacant."
Same as I expected...
I suddenly flew up and watched the entire room from the ceiling.
Hexagonal honeycombs were totally vacant. The nectar thieves were my family, my father, grandfather and grandmother.
What did they think of honeybees? They are forced to faint with smoke and robbed of their precious nectar they have collected diligently.
"Everybody, do you know who the nectar thief is?"
I was very angry with the heart of a honeybee and said in the way our queen does.
"A thief?"
"What is a thief?"
I was shocked by this. Honeybees are real good-natured persons, I mean, good-natured bees.
At that moment, indoor worker bees that regained vigor started to say according to their own fancies.
"We must not waste our time."
"We have to work"
"You field bees here, please collect nectar right away,"
saying so, the indoor worker bees started to move on the vacant honeycombs in the nectar cellar.
Honeybees know nothing in this world. They only escape from the smoke as ordered by the queen. They never attempt to find the reason. Even if they have once fainted, they get to work once they have recovered. They work hard and hard, then end their short lives.
I imagine the image of my father carrying honey stored in a big can on a car.
And I recall the remarks of a queen that the first Q told me.
Honeybees that used to live in the nature, were provided with a gorgeous castle. Their lives have improved but they have lost the ability to think. They work, work and work. Why?
I know part of the answer now.
When the honeybees lived in the nature, stored nectar was all their property although they had to do everything to make their house. When the honeybees are given a nice castle (actually a wood beehive), worker bees must work hard forever because they are robbed of their precious nectar stored.
But, I thought.
My father and grandfather do that just to make money necessary to live...
Now my brain was like entangled waste thread.
That's why I decided to weave the story to its end from the heart of a honeybee. This is also the living will of the first Q.
Moreover, I am writing "A Tale of a Girl's Transformation into a Honeybee," so that I am beginning to think I might not be destined to death halfway unlike the worker bees.
I am a super-girl honeybee. Tee-hee.





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