Monster Or Valuable Ally? Angie the Bee and Her Beekeeper

The first time, I was cleaning the cell. The boredom was killing me. My sisters, on the other hand, sang like Cinderellas. You feel like singing, without flowers, meadows, world, freedom! We had not yet produced all the honey we are capable of. Suddenly, I saw him. In fact, I saw his shadow. Gigantic. Dark. It was not a blackbird, it had no wings. Although I had just been born, I wasn't stupid. He was a monster. He had four legs. With two, he slipped something very strange under our house. He fiddled with a black wire, attached to this cold, hard thing, which glistened in the sun. Meanwhile, he was squeezing something smaller with one paw. Its head was gigantic! But I couldn't see if it had eyes, it was all covered by a rectangular box, something so strange! We bees don't distinguish details very well, but out of fear I started fluttering, I seemed to be going crazy, I couldn't keep still. He, on the other hand, was not afraid of us.

I admit it: for a long time afterwards I thought it was some kind of dream. Or rather, a nightmare. I was so frightened that I swore in my mind to my mother, the queen bee, that I would never again protest when I was on cleaning duty. Perhaps that terrifying image had been sent to me as punishment by the ghost of the queen mother bee, who, from the great cloud of all the bees of the past, observes our lives. "OK, I'll be good, I'll be a model bee from now on, I swear!", I said to myself. Anything to never feel that sense of unease again, to never have to hear those threatening footsteps. My older sisters began to tease me, in chorus: 'Here she is, the lionheart! So brave! She's the one who wants to travel the world, her mind is wasted on being a sweeper, heaven forbid! How awful for Angie, who dreams of great adventures, to be a 'gravedigger', as she says!

I was humiliated, nervously humming to myself, I felt like crying. Then, overcoming my pride, I dared to ask, "Him who?" "Him, the one who comes for our honey in July!". "He comes to fetch? Perhaps you meant: he comes to steal." I was so angry. They were telling me, resignedly, that every summer there was a monster who took the honey we produced as if it was the most normal and acceptable thing in the world. At the time I was too young to understand. Now that I have become an explorer bee, I know that he actually takes care of us, builds our house and only takes the surplus honey for himself. He also has to survive, and make a few 'mini-bees' survive, which I later got to know. Today I learnt that he stores honey in the highest part of our house, which is called a beehive, in a wooden box, the honeycomb. The first time I saw him, however, I was small, naive, full of questions.

"What else does this monster steal from us, let's hear it," I asked fiercely. General laughter. With my fur bristling with nervousness, I had to offer a rather comical performance of myself. They explained to me that he also took wax honeycombs from time to time, but that this too was not a bad deed. The more the honeycombs are used by us bees to lay eggs, the more the space inside the cells decreases, as the larvae's cocoons, the exuviae, are not removed and so, from year to year, the available space becomes tighter and tighter, resulting in smaller and smaller bees. Therefore, having our combs renewed every so often is beneficial and also helps to keep us healthier, because any spores that accumulate in the wax are removed. A bit like spring cleaning, but much bigger! By renewing the combs, we bees are encouraged to get the wax glands working.

However, I didn't know anything at the time. So, I decided that as soon as I saw him again, I would follow him. The opportunity came soon after, when I was promoted to explorer. I was fluttering from flower to flower when a flying saucer as round as the moon, but in black and blue chequered, brushed past me. Two four-legged monsters, the same as him, but smaller, came close to me to pick up the mysterious flying saucer. "No fair, that was foul!" "But if I didn't even touch you! It's goal, one-nil! Yay!!! Lukaku scores for us!" They were waving and chanting strange choruses. I heard two voices, from afar: "Guys, home! We're going to eat soon and you haven't showered yet." I followed them, trying not to buzz, so as not to attract attention. Suddenly, there it was, his house. They went inside and there he was in front, together with another he, a bit smaller, who had on his head many long strings, longer than him, and a red skirt.

This time, I met his eyes. He didn't look bad. They went into the house. Outside, leaning against the wall, was one of those strange objects he had placed under our house, the first time I had seen him. "Shall I bring in the scales?" said what I later found out was his companion. "Yes, it has just arrived. I'm going to put it under the new beehive in the afternoon." "Dad, what's it for?" the one who had scored the goal asked. "It's to check the weight of the hive and thus figure out how much honey we'll have to sell in September," he replied. Um, so our honey was being sold! I want the percentage, I thought to myself. The monster is called a man and with time I realised that he was not a monster, he was just a beekeeper. He also works hard, just like us worker bees. He has to feed his kids. He sells our honey, but he looks after us with love, he cures us of parasites. In short, today I consider him almost a relative.