The bees, by Laline Paull

It takes 338 pages for this bee swarm to lift off.  Told from the viewpoint of a single bee in a hive in an old orchard, the novel strives to make life as part of the Hive Mind comprehensible to humans.  Flora was born a worker bee, one of those in the lowest caste, the sanitation workers who clean the hive and dispose of the dead.  The motto of the hive is “Accept, obey, serve,” and all live to attend and protect the Queen bee who is the mother of them all.  But Flora is different and is allowed to join the foragers who leave the hive to bring back nectar and pollen.  She also breaks the prime rule of the hive by her ability to lay eggs.  The hive is under stress from chemicals used in modern agriculture as well as internal frictions that develop when it is sensed that a worker has stepped out of line.  The writing is rather clunky and the book is at least twice as long as it should be.  Even someone as interested in bees of all kinds as I am, which are under considerable threat from human actions, had a tough time sticking with this fable.  338 pp.