A mother will stop at nothing to ensure the survival of her offspring, but it may just cost her everything else and risk the very hive she swore to protect. Terrified of being discovered, but determined to save her child, Flora sets about performing ever-riskier feats in the name of protection. Only the Queen may lay, and anyone else caught doing so is a traitor.

After a wasp attempts to attack the hive one day, Flora 717 is part of the group that helps kill it, and her status begins to grow, giving her new jobs elsewhere in the hive, even meeting the Queen herself.īut then Flora lays an egg, something that is utterly forbidden in the totalitarian state of the hive. This sets her aside from the others, but she maintains the same thought processes – sacrifice everything for the Queen and protect the hive at all costs. In Laline Paull’s debut novel, she takes us inside the hive to meet them.įlora 717 is a sanitation bee, born too big and ugly, unlike her sisters, and unusually for her kin, with the power of speech.

It might not seem real, given every supermarket in the world is still is well-stocked with honey, but bees do far more than that, and without them the world will be a poorer place indeed.

With bee populations plummeting, the knock on effects to agriculture would be catastrophic. Talk to anyone in the know about the climate change disaster that’s currently unfurling and before long it’s probable you’ll end up discussing the bees.

The bees laline