The Bees

I went into this curious, and came out loving it. Essentially we're following the life of a bee that is different from the others, and seeing all the different threats.

The book does an incredible job guiding the reader to recognize that being pushed into unfamiliar territory can be a good growing experience, especially with other more experienced people guiding the way.

Not my cup of tea, I’m way outside my usual genres and I’m surprised I finished it. It was beautifully written I just found myself not interested.

“I am the last princess,” her low voice carried. “And I have already wet my dagger with the blood of all others. But one.”

The Bees

“You have wings and courage and a brain. Do not annoy me by asking permission”

I originally bought this book just for the cover. I absolutely love bees and this is about as bee as you can get when it comes to books. This was one of the strangest books I have ever read. Think animal farm but for bees. Set in a bee hive, it is full of drama, high stakes and complex organisation that is incredible to read about. But there is a price to pay, stuck in a cult like environment built upon slavery, brain washing and secrets. Not only this but there are themes of religion as the queen is considered “divine” and the hive is expected to partake in daily rituals, prayers and even sacrifice. The bees also seem to worship death, even going so far as to call it the “Kindness”. Workers are regularly “given the kindness” for sins such as greed, desire, idleness and even deformity. They even wish and beg for it, especially if they think they have harmed the hive in any way.

The more I think about this book the more I am marvelled at the commentary woven throughout this book. This book was so interesting to witness the complexities of the world that Paull has created. There were certain moments where I was just laughing at how ridiculous some of the behaviours were (the drones if you've read it). I don't know how realistic it all is but if even a little bit is true then omg bees are messed up xD.

Not only did Paull touch upon the behaviours inside the hive, but also how the outside world effects it too. Whether its winter, other insects, animals and even technology, the hive was not having a good time at all. Paull tells of lack of freedom of speech, classism, slavery, eugenics and religious issues in such a beautiful way that it really makes you think at the end. It's such a powerful story showcasing the dark truth behind controlling states. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about it.

This wasn't what I expected. I was enjoying it at first but then it just faded for me as the middle bits were pretty slow and hard to want to read. The ending was good and that made up for some of it. Definitely makes you see bees in a different way.

There were elements of this that were interesting, but overall I just really didn't like this book. This review's gonna be a little disjointed, but I'm laying it out then I'm ready to be done thinking about this.

I knew going in that this was supposed to be about literal bees, and I think this would have worked for me a lot better if they hadn't been so thoroughly anthropomorphized. Flora 717 made me frequently forget that she was supposed to be a bee (except when she was foraging, and then talked about smells and the most delicious flowers ad nauseum). I literally thought of the Sage caste of bees as human priestesses, because they didn't seem to have any elements that made them literal bees other than having claws? But also, Flora's human emotions bothered me, because if I'm supposed to believe that the good of the hive is the most important thing to every bee, her motivations, feelings, grief , particularly about the eggs she wasn't supposed to be laying, did not make sense.

I think I also would have been less irritated if, right off the bat, Paull hadn't set precedents for how the characterization ought to be, then broken every one of them. The bees are all born of a certain kin. The Flora kin are sanitation bees, of the lowest caste, mute and required to serve the hive through cleanliness for their entire lives. The next thing you learn is that, if a bee is not able to be useful, or has a deformity, the police come and kill her.

So the first thing in the book that happens is that Flora is born, she can talk, she is way bigger than all the rest of the bees, and a Sage priestess decides to prevent the police from killing Flora. (Which, I mean that precedent of All Nonconforming Beings Must Die is terrible, but like, this is one page after that rule was laid out! Just leave that out if it's not important!) Instead, the Sage is like, let's do an experiment - you're gonna work in the nursery, feeding larva babies. Flora has Ambition. She wants to work with the older larvas! She wants to have her own eggs, secretly, even though she knows that only the queen is allowed, and that she will die if she does. The Sage is like, no, go back to sanitation. But somehow, Flora works like every job in the hive, cleaning and serving food, and serving the queen, and doing the priestesses' jobs, and foraging for nectar, and is just AMAZING at all of them. She's just awesome at everything! And can go back and forth to sanitation as it's convenient for her and nobody ever questions anything.

Also, the bees literally just want to bask in the love of their queen mother. They use the Lord's Prayer, and just sub in Mother instead of Father. (“Our Mother, who art in labor, hallowed be thy name...”) and that literally made me roll my eyes. It felt lazy, that there was so much Christian rhetoric used when they could not have had any concept of human religion. They don't even recognize that the beekeeper is a human, just something that tears open the hive and steals from the Treasury. I understand the idea of worshiping the mother, as the queen is literally the center of the hive, but everything bad that happens in the hive is because of sin, wanting things is sin, not following the hive mind is sin, thinking you're better than your caste is a sin.

And oh, the ending was so bad. It was so not good. So not believable.

Glad I'm done with it.

I was cautiously optimistic about this book, because I'd heard good things about it, but really? Bees? An entire book from the viewpoint of a worker bee? Even fictionalized, how much material is there really to work with?

SO MUCH.

My fears were completely ungrounded because this book is AMAZING. Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, tasked with taking dead bodies out of the hive, cleaning up wax cells after new bees have hatched, and other duties to keep the hive clean. Somewhat extraordinarily, it is discovered that she can produce the liquid needed to feed bee larva, and is taken to serve in the nursery for a bit, where she starts to develop a mind of her own.

As Flora develops new abilities and works her way through the ranks of the hive, we start to learn that something in the governing of the hive is not quite what it should be. Something is wrong. But the strictly enforced castes and other outside factors, like weather and predators, delay Flora's quest to ferret it out.

Between lying wasps, conniving spiders, and a conspiracy within the ranks of her own hive, Flora bounces from danger to danger trying to protect what she loves in an engrossing story of bravery and sacrifice.

I absolutely loved this book. I especially liked that anywhere possible, actual bee behavior was described and used to further the plot. This is definitely one of my favorite reads this year!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Deeply strange and surprisingly really good? It's... alright, so: ignore the blurb that says it's like The Hunger Games. It's actually a bit like Watership Down, but for bees, but also darker and more violent and alien but in a way that's just unshakably compelling. The synesthetic quality of the bees' world will have you almost understanding what it must be like to experience the world in scents and vibrations. I believed wholeheartedly in its entire premise from the first page to the bittersweet end. I stayed up late reading it and was grumpy at interruptions (like having to eat food) the next day while enraptured in the last chapter. It's dark and wild and good magic.

I really don't know what I think of this book. I liked it, when I was reading it, but as soon as I put it down I had to force myself to pick it up again. If the protagonists had been people instead of bees you would have an average dystopian adventure. Using bees as the characters gave it more of a flavour of a children's book but with decidedly adult content. So here we are with a children's/coming of age/ dystopian/ecological themed book. Three stars for the content and a fourth because I love bees.

I should just say once again that despite what I have written this is NOT a book for children.

Most anthropomorphisms end up being too human or too alien for me. This one hit an excellent balance of bee-like behaviors but still enough ‘human' characteristics like curtsy and religion to make it accessible and understandable. This is a book following a bee through the natural life cycle of a hive and bee's life. Includes overcoming birth castes, foraging adventures, and politics of an aging divine ruler.

I realized as I was reading this that I don't really read books with nonhuman characters. I didn't read the Warriors series or The Secret of NIMH (I did love the movie as a kid even though it scared me) or Watership Down (which until very recently I thought was a book about the Navy). I generally stick with the humans, but one of the categories in Popsugar's challenge is to read a book with nonhuman characters. I got an email that The Bees was on sale for $1.99 so I picked it up. It looked interesting enough.

And it was. I know very little about bees and the hive mentality save for a few general things. I know there is a queen and worker bees and they collect pollen and make honey, etc. But the details that Paull gets into is quite fascinating and it's obvious she has done her homework.

The Bees is a quick read. Once I got going I was too curious to stop, but at times it was difficult to relate. Her descriptions of the hive, its layout and structure were lost on me. She spoke of the Dance Hall, the lobby, the nursery, the morgue, the patisserie, and I just couldn't picture it. My mind fluctuated between what I normally would picture those things to look like and what they could possibly look like in the a wooden (man-made) live. I've only seen the hives with the panels. It didn't make sense to me. And then it was are they like human bees? Walking around talking and walking with clothes and such? Or are they bees who talk? But they have brooms. And dustpans. I'm confused.

Maybe it's my inexperience with animal characters or my inability to be imaginative on that level, but it was a stumbling block for me. I spent a lot of time trying to understand what was happening because I couldn't picture it.

What was fascinating to me was how the hive struggles with the encroaching human world and the effects humans have on the bees way of life. It got me thinking about how humans ‘steal' the honey and made me want to plant lots of flowers and put out bee drinking bowls for the bees here.

Was the story good? Yes. I had to know what was going to happen next. What were the priestesses planning? Could Flora 717 keep her secret? Does the hive survive the winter? Were the spiders telling the truth? The creepy factory during several scenes and the abruptly violent moments had me hooked.

Will I read another book about nonhumans? Um, probably not. But this one wasn't half bad.

“The Bees” was just okay and falls along a 2.5 star rating, but I'm rounding down this time. Perhaps, the 2014 Best Of lists hyped this one too much, or, perhaps, it's just not all that great. The idea of following a worker bee through daily activities through a fictional lens was alluring, as were the comparisons to “Watership Down.” However, this book comes nowhere near the genius of Richard Adams' wonderful book.

Some portions were interesting, such as the handful of interactions with the Myriad, but I never felt grabbed. Actually, I got through the book quickly because I was hoping to get one more into my woefully low 2014 book count and because the font was relatively large. Ultimately, I never felt terribly invested in Flora 717 or most of the characters, other than Sir Linden and Lily 500, which may have been the core issue.

Really captivating, well-written story that anthropomorphized the bees only so much that I could understand them, but never to the point that I forgot this was a story about bees. It really made me think about the effects of group-think and religious fervor and the power of one willing to forge her own course. Definitely recommended.