Queen Bee and the Worker Bees

There is this basalt beehive in the Alps mountains. In this beehive, there were many, many beehives there, and then there is one particular beehive which was particularly big. Over time, many, many bees had come and made it very big, so it was probably like 3 meters wide and 2 meters deep.

The thing with the beehives is that there are many bees who live in it. Every morning they go out and they go and suck the nectar from flowers and they bring it back. They store the nectar they suck from the flowers in their honeycomb, in their beehive, and that turns into honey. That honey is what they eat in the winters when they cannot fly out and it is snowing.

So that is the kind of way bees live. In each beehive, there are thousands and thousands of bees, and each bee has a small room to live in which they make, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So that is how beehives are. Beehives are very, very technical and scientific. Who has taught the bees how to make beehives, nobody knows. And how they organize themselves, nobody knows.

Every beehive has one queen bee. All bees are small and brown in color, and each beehive has one big black fat bee, and they are called the queen bee.

How the queen bee came, nobody knows. How a queen bee is born in the beehive, nobody knows. But each beehive has a queen bee, and this queen bee is very bossy usually, and specially in this beehive, she was very, very bossy.

So in this particular beehive, this queen bee's name was Rani. Rani Bee was her name. Everybody used to call her Rani, but she was so bossy.

She used to shout at all the bees. All the bees are worker bees. Every morning at six o'clock, she used to start shouting, "Get up, get up, get up!" and any bee who was lazy would get a kick in the butt. She had made a timetable for all the bees.

"The bees on this side, morning six o'clock you have to go and get so much nectar." And when they came back with nectar, she used to go and measure how much they got. If any bee did not get enough nectar to make honey, she used to whack the bee. She was very rude to everybody.

Then there was another section of bees who were supposed to go around and clean the beehive every day. Anywhere she found any dirt, she used to scold them.

And then there was another section with the bees, they were supposed to give security of the beehive because you know there were humans who would come and sometimes for the honey. So these people used to... she had these people by roster, they used to go around and round, and every two hours they used to change so they could constantly go around the beehive and keep seeing if any danger is approaching the beehive. If the danger was approaching, the job of the bees was to alert, and all of them would come out and do so because they could scare them. So they were the security bees.

And then there was the cleaner bees, and then there were the cooks, and then there was some bees who were like doctor bees who were supposed to be there in case any bee got ill or sick or something, then this doctor bee could give them something.

And then there was another one, another set of bees who was responsible for other sort of sundry things like measuring how much honey is left, how many days, how many bees are there. And so this kind of... she used to run all this program. She had a job for every bee and she used to monitor who's doing this.

But she used to shout at everybody like crazy because she was mad. And this Rani used to make a mess and all the bees hated her.

Then suddenly, you know, then some bees one day they were eating their lunch and they said, after they had come back from a hard day's work collecting all the nectar from all these trees, she says, "Tell me something, we are all working so hard. We go out and we go and collect all this nectar. We have to fly, fly, fly for hours and hours. We have to find these flowers. We get it back. After that she comes and calculates how much we got back and then she scolds us. And then she makes us clean. Then she gives security duty to other people. And what does she do?"

So they are saying, "I don't know what she does." Because these bees don't realize that she is the one who is keeping everything together, she is planning. But she was... so they said, "This fat bee, she doesn't do any work. I have never seen her go fly out and collect any honey. I have never seen her do any cleaning. I have never seen her help anybody. She is only shouting and making us work and work. And all she does is she eats the honey and gets fatter and fatter. This is not fair."

And then they say, "This is not fair, this is not fair. But what can we do? If we try and do something, this Rani Bee will whack us so bad and she will throw us out." And sometimes when some bees were not disciplined and did not listen to this Rani Bee, she used to throw them out of the honeycomb and then they had to go and find some other house. And usually they would die because if the bees don't come back to their beehive, they will die. Some eagle or some bird will eat them up. So they were like very scared of her.

But said, "This is not fair." So they kept talking, talking. Small, small groups started talking. She said, "Let's do one thing. Let's all the bees come together and not do what she is asking and let us drive her out. Let her die."

So they said, "That's very dangerous, you know. She is so strong, she is so big, we are so small." She said, "No, but all of us..."

So slowly, slowly all these bees started conspiring and they all got together. And one day nobody left the beehive in the morning. So this Queen Bee was going crazy. She was like, "What's going on? You are supposed to go out! The sun has come out! Go out and get the nectar!"

Nobody said no. And then they all got together and they surrounded the Rani Bee and they, bam, bam, beat her up nicely. And this bee was crying, "I have to leave, leave, leave!"

She said, "No, you are not going to be there. We don't want to listen to you anymore and get out."

She says, "But you don't understand. If I go, who will tell you what to do?"

They said, "Don't worry, we know what to do. We can manage ourselves. We have been getting the honey and we will eat our honey. We will all live together happily without you telling us what to do."

And they all beat her up. So this time the Queen Bee said, "I am no match for 10,000 bees. They are going to kill me." So she flew away. Of course she went away.

And then she came back... no, wait. All the bees came together and they celebrated independence, happiness. "Now we have nobody to control us! We are free!" And they all celebrated.

So they said, "Okay, today..." Because every day the Queen Bee used to give them ration. She said everybody could only get one milliliter of honey to eat, not that you can eat whatever you want. So she used to give them exactly 1 ml. And now they said, "Eat as much as we can!"

So they went and they ate. Somebody ate 2 ml, 3 ml, 5 ml. So they all ate a lot and they were very happy that day and they celebrated.

Next morning, nobody to wake them up. So some of them slept through, some of them went out, some got honey, some didn't. And then the security people also didn't go out. And they were all basically making lot of happiness because they had a lot of honey still left, right? Because every year they collect.

Now many people didn't go. Nobody disciplined, no control, no timetable. Some people went, some bees went, some didn't. Slowly, slowly, nobody was bringing enough nectar because everybody said, "Why should I go? Somebody else should go." But there was no leader to tell them, right?

So slowly the honey started going away. There was no security, nothing. And then suddenly they realized they started fighting with each other. "You get honey! You get honey!" But nobody was there to lead them and they started fighting with each other and they were suddenly so unhappy.

And there was no security. One day, they saw one bear came, was about to go and grab the honeycomb and break it. But somehow they saved themselves by coming together and they said, "My God, today was a scare because there was nobody out on the security that day."

And they then suddenly realized just these 10,000 bees on their own cannot manage themselves. Everybody needs a leader like a Rani Bee. But by this time it was already late. There is no Rani Bee yet. Rani Bee is already gone.

"So we must find this Rani Bee back." So they said, "Okay, now what we are going to do? Organize ourselves. All of us will fly in different directions and try to see where she is."

They said, "This one, this one, she likes sunflowers. There is a sunflower plantation." So they went, went, went and looked. Finally they found this Rani Bee.

She said, "Rani Bee, we beg you, please come." He says, "What happened?" "All of it, all control, out of control, no security, nothing." He says, "Yes Rani Bee, we beg you, please come back. You want to scold us, be harsh, but come back because we need a leader."

And then finally the Rani Bee came. Rani Bee also said, "Okay, I also saw my mistake. I need to be nicer to everybody. But you have to realize every honeycomb beehive needs a leader because without leader everybody will do what they want and they will be total chaos and then the beehive will break. Either a bear will come and eat it or human beings will steal the honey, we will not have honey."

So then they realized that the leader had such an important job of controlling everything, of making a plan, giving everybody a job. And finally the honeybee came, but she also realized and then she became much, much nicer to everybody. So that's the story.