The hive stinks of sickness. My daughters hatch with twisted wings and blunt antennae and their sisters kill them. They kill them quickly because they love them. A jab into the head with a stinger. My daughters carry the bodies far away, depositing them I-don’t-know-where.
The hive dwindles, and there are echoes of mutiny among the workers. They dance of regicide. I don’t blame them. My eggs are few, the larvae weak. Many die before they pupate and the daughters that do hatch are malformed and sickly. If I cannot lay, the hive needs another queen.
But there are no other queens. And the workers haven’t decided, yet. Only a few, angry sisters dance of death. The others are unconvinced. My life is spared. For now.
The queen cells lay empty, and we are too few. The comb barely trembles with
