Bee in my bonnet

 The bee thing is bugging me. I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about this.

Ever since a little bee landed beside me in the garden and died I’ve been wondering about bees. I don’t know why.

I know the bee didn’t have any special message to deliver, it was just a dead bee. But it reminded me that I used to stick stickers in tube stations. Lots of these were bee stickers.

I stuck all those bee stickers but I don’t ever remember thinking, “Why bees?”

I haven’t stuck a bee stickers for years. I don’t know why bees are in my head now. I wish they’d buzz off.

I keep noticing bee words and phrases. The alphabet is A bee C,  and when we go to bed we ‘zzzz’, like a buzzz.

Every day I’m as busy as a bee, but I find time to wonder about bees.

Everything is as sweet as honey in my life, but I’d get a buzz if I could figure this out.

I even read serious scientific articles about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The bees are dying and no one knows the reason why. I considered devoting my life to saving thing the bee. I considered it for… ten minutes. But I think there’ll be enough bees to get by, or else science will figure it out (I hope.) Instead I’m thinking of my problems, ’What does colony collapse disorder say to me?’

I wish I could let this bee. I should just bee happy with my nice life.

I wondered if it was some being-40 thing? A mid-life crisis, wondering who I wanted to be(e)?

It was true that I was in a funk  (pity my poor boyfriend.) I had a great job, a lovely house, a wonderful family, all the  boxes were checked.  But still, my life lacked some kind of… buzz?

Should I take up beekeeping as a hobby?

I wished I could. I’d seen a documentary about beekeepers in the CCD crisis, it was sad… but this is about me, right? I envied those beekeepers their passion for their work, the bees were their life. I liked my job well enough, my family were all good, I tinkered with writing a bit, but I had no passion, no calling, no lifes work.

I thought some more about bees, like they’d be the answer. There was the message on the Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin. I ate honey cake for breakfast on my first holiday abroad. There are queen bees. Bees were stripy like tigers.  Bees die when they sting. Do worker bees play sometimes?

I thought a lot about bees. But my bee mystery wasn’t any closer to being solved, it was as enigmatic as the reason bees died of CCD.

The bees had everything they needed, but still they died. I had everything too, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t happy. But I wasn’t going to lay down and die.

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