It’s 7AM, and there is a bee hovering at my window, striped black and yellow, fuzzy. If it weren’t for the screen, I would reach out and touch her. But after several minutes of watching her headbutt the window in pursuit of some hidden treasure, I decide she must be blind and totally imperceptive of pheromones. After all, there are flowers right below her on the windowsill, but she doesn’t seem to notice them.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she does see the flowers, lined up in neat rows of pastel yellows, but chooses not to react to them. Maybe she searches for something of more importance to her, something only my bedroom can offer.
Finally, exhausted and despairing, she gives up, hovers at the window for a moment without fluttering her translucent wings, and sinks downward, landing in a crumpled heap among the flowers. When I run outside, I know she is already dead. The sun reflects itself in her eyes’ many lenses. Later that evening, I give her a proper burial.
Back at the hive, the other bees will continue with their lives, conforming to the same expectations and routines as always. Perhaps the others workers will gossip about her. Did you hear about that one gal? I heard she went after the purple walls in some human’s house and just died when she realized she couldn’t get in. But the queen will not notice her absence, and after another week, neither will the rest of the hive. She is just one bee of hundreds; what is one lost life when many more still live?
