The Bees - Laline Paull

What a strange world I inhabited, reading this one.  The inside of a beehive, and all its workings.  And what a read it was - this will probably be in my Top Ten this year.   I know that some people liked this more than others so it's definitely a Marmite book.  It is hard, if you only like books with "real" happenings, to imagine that you could read a book of 300+pages about bees and their hive.  But for me it was fascinating. 

I knew that queens mated in the air, fertilised by the strongest drone, who died immediately afterwards.  I knew that.  I didn't know that the drone died immediately after leaving his penis inside the queen.  And if that isn't enough, I just thought there were bees who flew and collected pollen, and those who stayed behind.  It turns out that it's much more complicated than that!  The bees who collect pollen, collect that as a second thought.  The first thing they are after is nectar, which is why you see them delving deep into flowers.  The pollen is secondary, but that is the thing you see if you inspect a bee close up in the garden, when you spot the tiny yellow parcels attached to the legs.

And if this sounds like a natural history lesson, forget it, for although the bees in this book are not humanised in any way except for speech, it is wonderful and illuminating, and if you can make it, will make you understand a lot more about honey, about the way a hive works, and what happens during a year's cycle.  Did you know that they have castes?  That the lowest caste are the cleaners of the hive?  They have policemen?  A ruling class?  Proper nurseries?  Did you know that the drones are waited on hand and foot, and fed the best, and cleaned and manicured by the others...... because they are male, and need to be kept big and strong on the chance that they are the chosen one to mate with a new queen.  I could go on.

The heroine of this book is Flora 717, a lowly cleaner worker bee.  She's not liked much, she's a bit on the plain side, too tall, markings too dark.  And if this all sounds totally human you might find yourself open-mouthed like me. You'll learn how and why this structure works, and follow Flora rising in the ranks from cleaner to forrager.  The more I read, the more I loved this book.  I will never, ever, look at a bee in the same way again.

At the end of the book, the author tells you which book she found out all the facts from, and also gives a Google link to follow in case you don't believe   what you are reading.  Finally, here is a link to a very short slo-mo film with some facts overlaid.  Watch it!

laughingsquid.com/apis-mellifera-honey-bee-a-slow-motion-video-featuring-fascinating-facts-about-the-lives-of-bees/

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