May Bee

Gaye Manwaring

Busy. Busy. Fuzzy. Buzzy.
Feeding, cleaning, fanning, weaning.
We worker bees are justly named.
Our industrious streak is famed.
The smug boy bees are so lazy.
Their droning noise drives me crazy.

I fly out into the fresh air seeking
flowers in bloom.
I’ve had to learn the waggle dance
to share the flowers’ direction and distance
with my sister worker bees.
I sip nectar from the flowers
with my drinking-straw mouth.
The yellow pollen sticks to my body hairs and
I brush it into the baskets on my legs.

In return for these floral gifts
we bees pollinate the flowers.
We transfer the male pollen grains
from bloom to bloom.
Productive plants support the food chain
and the cycle of life.

The irony.
The agony.
There is no fun in our sterile state.
Yet the queen has a nuptial flight.
The only males are my brothers!
I will not meet any others.
We should form a workers’ union.
It is the only hope of congress for us.

We will beelieve, beehave, bee seen,
Serve royal jelly to our queen.
Every bee has a role to play
Serving the colony each day.

Our duty goes beyond our hive.
Bee actions help the plants to thrive,
Ensuring the earth will survive.
That’s our reason to be alive!

The Science

Honeybees have three castes: workers, drones and queens. The sterile workers maintain the hive. They collect pollen and nectar from blooms and communicate the flowers’ location through the waggle dance. They feed royal jelly to a larva which becomes a queen, the only fertile female. She goes on a nuptial flight with fertile male drones from another colony. Insect pollinators and flowering plants have co-evolved, improving their symbiotic relationship. Bees are essential for pollinating many food crops. Bee populations are declining due to climate change, pesticides and habitat loss which will have a negative impact on agriculture and global ecosystems.

The Poet

Dr Gaye Manwaring MBE is a retired university lecturer. She is interested in nature and loves travelling with her husband in their motorhome. She runs courses on wellbeing, both online and face-to-face. She has published two non-fiction books: Waiting in the Wings: Letters of a Pilot in World War 2 and Learning my Living: Reflections on Teaching in Higher Education for over Fifty Years.

Next poem: Melolontha melolontha by Suzanna Fitzpatrick