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The long winter was finally over. Throughout the winter, we fanned our wings to warm each other, sucked nectar in turns, and slept in turns. It had been one long, severe winter. When I was relieved to feel the spring on my thin and weak body, the queen opened her mouth after a long while. "My children, you have done a great job." It was such a feeble voice, that we could barely make it out. With almost all her attendant bees dead, as many other worker bees as possible had gotten into the elevator to warm and protect the queen. "Spring has arrived," said the queen, "Be careful and start moving your body a little at a time." In response to her words, we started moving one by one and the bees in the elevator came out, leaving her. When we lined up in the hall, there were only two thousand of us left. The rest did not survive the winter. When all of us lined up in front of the elevator, the queen said again, "You are strong and fine bees who have survived winter for me, for this castle, and for all the bees in this castle." The two thousand bees who survived the long winter simply listened to the weak voice of the queen. "All of you hard working bees. Do not make haste. Work inside the castle until it becomes sufficiently warm outside," the queen was out of breath and sank to the floor. "Oh, I shall require a sip of honey. Where are my attendants?" But, by that time, no one knew who her attendants were. None of the bees moved, for they were not sure what they should do. I could not sit still any longer and moved one step closer to the queen. "May I serve you, Your Highness?" I said. "Yes, fetch me a sip of honey quickly," the queen answered. I stepped down the stairs falteringly but cautiously, sucked honey, and completed the task by carrying it back to the queen's mouth. As I had never stood so close to the queen, I experienced the wondrous sensation of being a true bee spreading quickly to my heart. The queen, recovering her strength, gently said, "Hurry to the honey stores, all of you, and get your strength back." "Yes, Your Highness," I answered before I knew it. The queen stared at me for a moment. "You...," she said in a different tone of voice, "seem to think a lot for a worker bee." I got a start. "When were you born in this castle?" I was at a loss for words and she then said, "You don't know? Then you are not such a pensive bee, after all. Pardon me. It was just my imagination." Apparently neither the bees nor the queen were prone to be deeply suspicious. That is why I managed to get away with not revealing my identity. Still, for a moment, she must have noticed that I was not a regular bee. After the remaining bees recovered some of their energy following their visit to the honey stores, the queen slowly spoke to them like one providing grand counsel. "Listen, my children. You must set an example for the next generation of worker bees that will be born to this castle. Remember this: In the world of the bee, you must apply yourselves to your work. Nothing else really matters. The queen bee must fulfill her role, the male bees theirs, and the worker bees must do their work and nothing else. If each of you fulfills your role without the slightest hesitation, this castle will flourish forever. This spring, do nothing but your work. Under no circumstances must you get into the habit of pondering things." The queen looked at me once again, then invited into the elevator a few dozen bees that she had appointed attendants, and closed the door. The elevator went up through the glass shaft to the queen's room on the eighth floor. Now all I needed to do was to think about how to finish this story. But how about that speech that the queen made just now? She had said, "If each of you fulfills your role without the slightest hesitation, this castle will flourish forever... Under no circumstances must you get into the habit of pondering things." Upon her saying these things, not one of the worker bees voiced any complaint or doubted her words. They simply kept on working. In the beginning of summer, the first Q told me the secret behind my transformation into a bee, but what good would I be able to do on behalf of the bees even if I had spent a year as a bee? My father and grandfather made worker bees work and sold the honey that they had accumulated. But they used a smoking device to stun the bees so that they did not get stung when they removed the honey. When there was little honey in the honey stores, they put in sugared water to make up for it.  But was this right?As hard as I tried to consider this from the point of view of a human, I was unable to come up with an answer. Perhaps it was because I was thinking with the tiny head of a bee. Yes, I should talk this matter over with father when I become a girl again.After thinking these things through, I devoted myself to my existence as a bee so that I could finish the rest of this story. First, we worked on preparations for the spawning of the queen. There was no longer any distinction between field bees and indoor worker bees . We just took care of eggs which the queen came down to the nursing room to lay. We carried what little honey and pollen remained in the honey stores and busily put them in the honeycombs next to those holding the eggs. Several days later, we finally exited the castle. I stood on the grassland. "Yee-haw! It's spring now!" I shouted or thought I had but there was hardly an ounce of strength left in my voice. Other bees joined me in shouting for joy. "We made it!" "Oh, I can smell the flowers." "They must be rape blossoms." "Well then, let's go!" "Right, let's show some spirit!" Buzzz, buzzz, zzzzzz We flew up in the middle of spring, humming weakly. An entire field of golden rape blossoms was waiting for us. |
| Day in and day out following the arrival of spring, I carried nectar from the rape blossom field to the castle and danced a "notification" dance. Eventually, Chinese milk vetch flowers bloomed and we came to have abundant supplies of nectar in the castle's nectar cellar. In the nursing room, the queen, now full of life, continued laying numerous eggs. Eggs became larvae, which became chrysalises, from which new worker bees were born. But it had not occurred to me at all how I was to turn back into a girl and return to my old house. Would I have to work for another year in this castle of bees? Or would I remain a human bee as long as I lived? I felt lonely but I was now a bee. From the time I woke up to the time I went back to sleep, my body seemed to move of its own volition as I went about performing my duties. One day, I flew up in the air with my fellow honeybees but could not make way through the sky as fast as I wanted. The first Q had been like this on the day that she died.
Oh, had my time come?But I did not want to die after all this. I wanted to go back to my house alive. Thinking about this and that, I started falling behind my fellow bees. Exhausted, I went into a nosedive without looking down, not even caring about where I would end up landing. My body fell like a nut, straight and fast. Then... Plock! Something hit my head. "Ouch!" I had been close to falling into a deep sleep but managed to regain my consciousness and balanced myself in a hurry. "Where am I?" Buzzz, buzzz. I heard the humming of bees around me. I was in the yard of my house. Before I knew it, I had been transformed back into a girl and sat on a stone in the yard. In the yard, lots of bees were busy flying around and my father and grandfather were inspecting the beehives under the trees. "Ah yes... it's just like that time..." It was like dreaming the same dream twice. It was exactly like when, last spring, I had turned into a bee. I simply looked around absentmindedly. "Now let's go inside." Father said and patted me on my shoulder. "Do you think we can collect honey again tomorrow?" Grandfather asked him. "No, we had better give them one more week. The bees have just started working actively. I think it's too early." Father said so and turned to me, "I imagine you must be close to finishing your story about bees." my father asked me, patting me on my head "What?" I said. "You've been working so hard on your writing paper everyday." I had no idea what he was talking about. "It doesn't matter if you're still not through with it. Why don't you let me have a look at it?" Still feeling wooly-headed, I went into the house from the back porch with father. In the small, three-mat room which I used, I found about 100 pages of writing paper, filled with messy handwriting, on my desk. "Oh, when did I write all this?" I wondered aloud with surprise. "Get out of here!" Father said, "All year, you've been devoting every moment of your spare time to writing this. You worked so hard on it that you even lost some weight, don't you remember?" Then, I realized that I really had thinner arms and legs. And there were really textbooks for sixth graders on the bookshelf and a timetable for sixth graders on the wall. Yesterday, the day before yesterday... Yes. I remembered that I already gone to school for about three weeks in the first semester in Class No.1 of the sixth grade. "Now I remembered!" I shouted and came to myself with a start. Throughout the year in the fifth grade, I had been going to school, returning home, and writing the story about the bees. Right away, I read through my 100-page manuscript pages all over again. "Gee, what a childish story!" I was ashamed of myself but gave the manuscript I had just read through to father. Father read my story at a leisurely pace. He complimented me on it, saying: "This is quite a fascinating story." Then, he also gave me some advice on what needed to be improved. So, I took time to rewrite the whole story and here it is, "A Tale of a Girl's Transformation into a Honeybee". And then summer vacation arrived for the sixth grade. Mother came to see us and was delighted to read my manuscript. "Well, you are something of a writer to write all of this by yourself," she said. "No, I would have written a much more childish story if it hadn't been for father's advice." "Is that so?" mother said with a wide-eyed expression. "Father wanted to be a writer when he was young," I told her, "So he can tell very interesting and wonderful stories." "Oh, I didn't know your father was like that, not at all," mother said. "Do you now think better of him?" I asked. "Yes, and I am surprised." mother answered in round-eyed wonder. "Then, do you want to settle down here and live with us?" I asked. Mother was silent for a while, thinking. Then she said, "No, I'd rather stay where I am now. The life in the city suits me better. But I will come to see you more often." There was something that I could not fit well into this story but I talked a lot about bees in my story with father. Father said: Bees will never become thoughtful in the way people are. But bees think in their own way. It's very natural and they have only as much desire as necessary for their survival. Also, praying mantises and toads come to eat bees and hornets attack on bees only according to rules of nature. It's not like people taking part in a war against another country. Then I asked father. "So it's wrong for you and grandfather to steal the honey that the bees have been accumulating at great pains and make them work so hard, isn't it?" Father nodded gravely. "Yes, it's wrong." He then added that man has the right to take what is necessary for his survival from nature, but that only man has escalating desires. "What do you mean, escalating desires?" When I asked so, father suddenly took my hand and pinched the back of it and said, "One sting!" I immediately remembered the play that grandmother had taught me when I was small and said, "Two stings!" I had pinched the back of Father's hand. "Three stings!" Father pinched the back of my hand again. I pulled back the lower hand that Father kept pinching and, with the hand, pinched Father's hand from above. "Four stings!" "Five stings!" "Eight (bee) stings, buzzzzzzz!" By the time father and I got violent, we were so excited and screamed with laughter. "I think this is a sort of escalation," he said, "I do it because you do it." Father was laughing when he said so. "Think of cars, for example. Cars are convenient. So more and more people end up using them. So what will happen if you decide not to use a car? You end up getting passed by others in their cars. So everyone will use cars. There will be more roads and less nature. But work will be done more efficiently thanks to cars. Civilization will advance more and more. To keep up with the speed with which civilization moves, man will come up with even more convenient things. Society will move that much faster. So this is how things escalate!" "Hmm," I said. "Some people who only think of catching up and moving at the speed by which society moves will just keep on working as hard as worker bees. Now, what is one clear difference between the world of bees and that of man?" He asked me a question, which I was able to answer immediately because I wrote this story for one year, imagining that I had really turned into a bee. "There is no money in the world of bees." Father clapped his hands and said, "Bull's eye! Only man will want more than he naturally needs. This is because he can't live without money." Then father added, "I certainly get honey and royal jelly from bees. But I also do my best to protect them from the winter cold and their natural enemies and never take more than necessary for our living." So I decided to have this story end here. I am very glad for the experiences of that one year during which time I imagined that I had turned into a bee. End
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