A Poem for "the tough old girls"

                        "Hive Dancer"

It seems all my life I've been a worker bee.
("Lifespan of the Worker Bee"
Says that poster at the Minnesota State Fair
Which I come back to every visit.)

Though there's no reasonable way
To compare the lives
Of old women and bees,

And anyway, why not be a queen?
Queens live one to three years;
Workers average forty-five days.

A queen struggles up out of the comb,
Kills her sister-queens, drives Mom away,
Flies, mates, multiple times, comes home,
And then that long last act
In the dark heart of the comb,
Fed and groomed by her little sterile daughters,
Laying eggs, on a good day, equal to her body weight,
Laying eggs, laying eggs, laying eggs--

Then of course there are drones--male--
Drones can't feed themselves, drones can't sting,
Drones fly when the queen flies,
Mate, if lucky, then die.
Some fail at queen-catching and bumble on home,
Hang around the hive cadging honey
Till summer ends, and the workers drive them away.

And there's no equivalent in human development
For that egg and larva business.
Sixty-nine years ago I came out helpless,
While a worker (three days an egg, twenty-one days
Curled in her cell in the comb)
Emerges full armed with stinger
Plus all those useful tools,
Honey-pot, wax glands, pollen basket.

But assume, for the sake of the poem
That day one for a worker bee
Would be about equal
To year twenty for me.

In days one to fifteen,
Young workers clean and polish cells,
Shovel out food to ever-hungry larvae,
Feed and groom the queen,
Cap the brood cells.

Middle-aged workers (ten to twenty-one days)
Build new comb, unload nectar from the foragers,
Convert it in their bodies into honey.
Ventilate the hive with their wings.
Some become undertaker bees,
Flying away the dead; diagnosing
Disease in the brood,
Flying sick larvae off
Where they cannot infect the rest.

Now comes the part I like. It is
The old worker bees
(On average, days eighteen to forty-five)
Who are the adventurers,
The foragers, the scouts.
It is the tough old girls bring the good stuff home,
The pollen, the water, the plant resin, the nectar,
Everthing that feeds the hive.
It is the old workers who do the bee dance,
Showing distance and direction to food sources,

And I, I am Old Tatterwings the hive dancer,
Having escaped a thousand dangers,
Zooming in with a golden load,
Making my circles and figure-eights,
   Basswood, two hundred yards south.
   Clover, north by northwest.
   Look out for bee-eating birds, for bad weather.
   Avoid two-leggers, unless they attack the hive.

I am the hive dancer,
Humming off in search of sweetness,
Borne on the song of her wings.

                                                       --Edith Rylander, Hive Dancer