~ Blume ~
The air changes. I feel it in the scent of my daughters, the smell of the loam, the heat. We grow older. My eggs are cared for differently when the daughters come home. They’re fed something richer. Some of them are nurtured tenderly and, when they hatch, they’re fat and glistening. They will be future queens.
Others are a kind of bee I only remember seeing once before, on my mating flight. For the first time in my life, I have sons. They flaunt their broad wings, puff out their bright fur. They smell of musk, of strength and possibility. They smell, like my princesses, of the future. But they make my other daughters anxious. They’re angry, buzzing dissent. They feel betrayed.
We won’t feed these brothers! They buzz. They are lazy! They are greedy!
Where once the bee song in
