With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. But it is also vicious, particularly when bee turns cruelly on bee.The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death.įlora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. hallowed be Thy womb.” It is sensual and passionate, especially when it comes to the harvesting of pollen from flowers. It is religious with worship centered on the queen: “ Our mother who art in labor. It is beautiful with the intricate architecture of the hive. That is fascinating enough, but Paull deftly wields this information to create an even more elaborately layered culture of beeness. (Do they really secrete beeswax from their bellies? Fan nectar into honey? Periodically murder the drones?) It quickly became clear that in its basic facts, the novel sticks closely to real-world apian biology and behavior. But her greatest ability is also her most dangerous: Flora 717 can produce eggs, something only the queen is meant to do and a guaranteed death sentence for any others who dare.Īt first, I found myself putting down the book every few pages to research Paull’s descriptions of bee life. She nurses the larvae in the Nursery, waits on the bawdy males in the Drones’ Hall and flies as a forager, gathering pollen and nectar.

Those unique abilities allow 717 an unprecedented freedom within the hive’s rigid class system. Though the elite bees, the Sages, call her big and ugly, she can speak, she produces royal jelly, and she’s very brave. Its heroine, Flora 717, is born into the worker caste, destined for nothing but the basest drudgery. Set in a honeybee hive, the novel is a parable about the consequences of groupthink. Laline Paull’s transfixing first novel, “ The Bees,” isn’t explicitly about the real-world problems that threaten their survival, but the story’s inspired imagining of hive life compels one to wonder about the extraordinary complexity and sophistication of these insects - and to care about their fate. Now my thoughts are hovering around bees again, but for a less foreboding reason.

Especially when walking (inevitably barefoot) through a particular Eastern Shore clover patch, I could focus on little else than trying to avoid their sting. Bees - which is to say, the fear of them - dominated many summers of my childhood.

The bees by laline paull