They have stopped dancing. The comb is almost silent, only the slight tremors caused by bee feet remind me there’s any life left. Three of my attendants have died, and there are too few healthy daughters to replace them.
Almost every bee in the hive is now peppered with the shifting lumps. A bee-eating mite. They clamp onto us with fierce jaws and suck life from us. There are two on my thorax and one clinging to my abdomen, sapping my health. I feel the way they shrivel me, how the whole hive is suffocating under their incessant appetite. I tried grooming them off. So did my attendants. But there are always more.
No-one dances of new flowers. The honey stores are running dry.
And the not-bee-boy is gone. Gone where? I don’t know. I can sense him, somewhere in the distance, almost beyond
