Maxine’s Foraging Debut

by
Glaydah Namukasa

Maxine was ready for her foraging debut. At fifteen days old, her period of in-hive labor was over. For the first time she would enter the world of light, scent, and flowers. She fluttered her wings and made small circles through the hive, swaying her body, her tripod gait exaggerated with enthusiasm and anticipation. Pollen-packers brushed her abdomen as they twisted and turned, carefully scraping pollen pellets off their legs and depositing it into cells. Wax-producers bumped into her as they delivered slivers of wax to the hands of honey-comb builders. All around her, her sisters’ wings vibrated in a synchronized hum. As Maxine approached the main entrance, she was met with dazzling rays of the afternoon sun. Its brightness shimmered across her compound eyes. She paused and fluttered her wings again. The beams of light streamed across the hive floor bringing light and warmth to the dim environment inside. Maxine couldn’t wait to experience the fragrant whispers of blossoms and all the splendor outside the hive that her sister scouts and sister foragers always buzzed about.

Maxine lived in Queen Gina’s colony nestled atop Kibbo Hill, hidden beneath the spreading, uneven canopies of umbrella thorn acacias. Her hive sat amidst the branches of a weeping wattle tree. How she longed to see the small pinnate leaves of the weeping wattle! Those leaves, one of her sister foragers had said, are friendly and welcoming like the petals of a rose. “When we return from the field, they open up to welcome us back, and when we are leaving, they wave goodbye.” Sister Tammy, one of the founders of Queen Gina’s colony, one of the most hardworking, one of the eldest, and one of the few who had lived long enough to see a flowering season come and go, had said that in the flowering season the lush green of the leaves was embellished with balls of bright yellow, petal-less flowers blooming amidst branches. She called them pom-poms. The pom-poms supplied Queen Gina’s colony with so much pollen that Queen Gina’s larvae always enjoyed excesses of protein. Maxine wondered if she would live long enough to see the bloom of the pom-poms. The flowering season was over. Maxine knew because her sisters had said so. All nearby flowers were already drained, and she was ready to travel whatever distances to search for food.

She hurried to the spot where her sister scouts, freshly returned from the field, performed the waggle dance to communicate where they had collected pollen, nectar, and water. She spotted Sister Tammy waggling her way across the dance floor. Sister Tammy’s body gorged with food. Her hind legs were stuffed with yellow pellets of pollen, and her stomach sac was swollen with honey. Sister Tammy was one of the few sister foragers who had returned with both nectar and pollen. Maxine admired Sister Tammy’s large golden pellets and the swollen nectar sacs which signaled a bountiful source. She hastened across, skittering over the comb toward the dance floor. Her dream was to work like Sister Tammy. Go out, forage the fields, and return with chock-full pollen pellets and over-flowing bags of nectar and water.

She joined her sisters who were studying the dance. She quivered and swayed around Sister Tammy, antennae attuned to every flick and vibration, ready to trace the directions to the food source. She fluttered closer, straining to interpret every wiggle, every pulse of Sister Tammy’s dance. She poised her antennae as she crawled around Sister Tammy again and again. She felt the vibrations as Sister Tammy waggled her body, as Sister Tammy flapped her wings, as Sister Tammy fumbled across the hive floor, but something was amiss. All those pulses, tremors, and scents of the waggle were supposed to map the path to food, this she knew, because she knew, because every sister knew. The waggle was their language, the sisters said. Those pulses, those angles, those tremors, each one of them was a word and every turn a sentence. Every shake was supposed to tell the distance and direction of the food source but something in Sister Tammy’s movements broke the pattern Maxine expected. Sister Tammy’s steps were uneven. Her movements followed an erratic rhythm she couldn’t understand. Didn’t the sisters always say when you dance, the waggle comes to you? When you listen, you hear what the waggle says? When you poise your antennae, you feel what the waggle tells you?

Maxine expected Sister Tammy to walk straight in a certain direction, turn right, waggle side to side, stop, then repeat, forming the familiar figure-eight pattern of clockwise and anticlockwise movements. Instead, she moved in a continuous circle, occasionally making a clockwise loop but never turning anticlockwise. She walked straight, but then kept turning this way, that way. It was hard for Maxine to understand and decode the message in the irregular dance-language. Maxine worried that if Sister Tammy kept staggering across the floor the location of the food would remain a mystery to all sisters. Maxine’s wings twitched. She felt a restless buzz thrum through her body. She panicked, struggling to follow the uneven vibrations of the dance, desperate to decode the message before the signal path was lost. She turned to a sister forager beside her and buzzed, lowering her wings, “Do you understand what Sister Tammy’s dance is saying?”

“She is tired,” Sister Forager buzzed back. “Sister Tammy overworks herself. Look at all the food she is carrying.”

“She doesn’t look tired. Besides, would she carry all that food if she was tired?” Maxine said, her antennae twitching as they picked up scents and pulses that didn’t make sense.

“You know Sister Tammy is one of the sisters who started this colony with Queen Gina. Isn’t she fifty days old?”

“She is fifty-one,” Maxine said, drawing closer to Sister Forager. “All the founders of this colony are in their fifties. They may be old, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do the dance anymore.”

“How do you know? Aren’t you like… starting outside duties today? I’ve been in the field for three days. I know more than you, Maxine. I told you Sister Tammy overworks herself. She is tired.”

Maxine circled Sister Tammy once more. Her antennae paused, then swept the air again, searching for whatever she had missed. “She is not tired,” she buzzed to Sister Forager.

Sister Forager shifted on the comb. She buzzed, “Maxine, focus on the sisters who are doing it right,” and crawled away.

Maxine could not walk away from Sister Tammy. She needed to understand the source of all that food. Had something happened to her? Maxine wondered. Had she been attacked at the food source? But how could she have collected all this nectar and pollen in plenty if she had been attacked? Maxine poised her hairs, her antennae, and listened. She butted her head against Sister Tammy’s body. She knew that if there was danger at the food source and that if Sister Tammy was hurt, she would stop dancing and yield to Maxine’s soothes. But Sister Tammy did not stop her shamble and Maxine was certain that something else was wrong with her.

Sister Tammy was her model. Sister Tammy wasn’t only a hard worker. She was the reason she, Maxine, and the rest of the younger honeybees were alive. She was the heroine who had saved their Queen Gina – so the stories had been told.

Sister Tammy was one of the few surviving worker bees who had helped start Queen Gina’s colony. One story said that Queen Gina had been hatched and raised in Queen Mother Mona’s colony, in a place called Sippi Shores. Queen Mother Mona was Maxine’s grandmother. As a young virgin bee fed on plenty of royal jelly, Gina thrived there and soon threatened to take her mother’s place. Queen Mother Mona was still strong and fertile, so she attacked and fought Gina almost to death. Gina was saved by Sister Tammy and other worker bees who whisked her away, took her up to Kibbo Hill in a furious swarm and started a new colony, now Maxine’s home.

Another story had it that Sister Tammy and her fellow founders of Queen Gina’s Colony were survivors of an abusive bee-keeping human. The human, it was said, was a greedy bee-venom-collector. He agitated bees and tricked them into stinging rubber surfaces on which he collected their venom. Sister Tammy lost thousands of sisters who bit the rubber material that dislodged their stingers from their bodies, causing death. Then, one morning, Sister Tammy and her siblings took Queen Gina and fled the beekeeper’s hive. They flew to the top of Kibbo Hill and started a new run-away family. Maxine never knew which version was true because she never cared for which version was true, because she wanted both stories to be true, because stories became smaller the moment you tried to choose one. So, she let both stories stay. When she retold the stories to her younger sisters, she placed them side by side. In one story Sister Tammy was a super sister to Queen Gina and in the second story Sister Tammy was an offspring of Queen Gina but in both stories Sister Tammy was hers, and that was enough.

In Queen Gina’s colony, stories lived on through generations. Big sisters told them, and young sisters retold them. Old stories became new, and new stories became old. Some stories were hummed in the vibrations of the combs, while others were carried from wing to wing. Others lingered in the scent of pollen or the tremor of a waggle dance. Maxine loved discovering new knowledge and places through stories. She enjoyed moments when a good story-teller’s words flew her outside the hive, guided her up mountains and hills, down slopes and escarpments, to grasslands, rocky ridges and gorges, over the waters, through bushes and shrubs. In these moments she tasted nectar from plant blossoms and leaves or glimpsed rich yellow pollen on the anthers of flower stamens. She loved going back in time, slipping into the lives of her ancestors who lived as messengers between worlds, carrying pollen on their legs and unspoken truths on their wings. She loved the heroes like Sister Tammy in stories and with a passion hated the villains, like the bee-keeper human from Sippi shores.

As a young worker bee who had been restricted to indoor duties, Maxine had only been to Sippi shores through stories. In her mind’s eye, she often saw the expansive unrolled carpet of spear grass cascading down the slope, the green slender blades dancing with the breeze. And down the slope she saw an area of wide-stretched land that opened into Kasenyi landing site on the southern shores of Lake Victoria. Through her sisters’ tales she saw what humans called boats and docks extending into the water. She saw congregations of ducks and pelicans wading gracefully in the shallows. She saw kingfishers hovering and plunging into the water. She saw humans milling around like ants, catching water creatures they called fish. In her sister’s stories, she even saw humans plundering honey, venom, and what else from honeybees. Through stories, she had learnt that humans could not be trusted.

In all the knowledge she had gathered from stories, she had never heard that a bee could falter in the waggle dance. How could Sister Tammy, practiced and wise, stumble mid-step? How could Sister Tammy lose the waggle pattern? And wasn’t it Sister Tammy herself who always said a single misstep could send sisters searching for food in the wrong place? A single misstep could send sisters lost among blooms and leaves. A single misstep could send sisters in the hands of wasps! As Maxine drifted in slow circles, she shook her head. Sister Tammy wasn’t faltering because she was old or tired. No. That couldn’t be it. Every sister carried their work in their wings. Even her tiniest, newest sisters knew exactly what to do without anyone showing them.

As a young worker bee, Maxine performed all her indoor tasks without any sister showing her what to do because each task unfolded from her legs, her wings, her proboscis with ease. She had nursed her young siblings still in larvae stage, cleaned the cells, produced wax, and built new cells. She did not need anyone to tell her that the cells should be hexagonal in shape, that they should be made with wax, that the cells for the sisterhood are smaller than the cells of the brother drones, that Queen Gina’s cell should be an elongated dome that fits her size. No one taught her how they flap wings to dry nectar and turn it into honey. She knew what to do. Everyone knew what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Something was wrong. Something was causing Sister Tammy to falter in the waggle dance.

Maxine felt the urge rise in her legs to scuttle, to buzz, to tell Sister Forager that Sister Tammy hadn’t faltered because she was old. The thought trembled through her whole body, ready to leap out of her. Maxine paused. She remembered the stories of her African ancestors, who always searched for the truth with patience. They approached it from the side, asking, observing, returning again and again, poising antennae, flapping wings, until they found the answers. Maxine chose to do the same. She would listen to the other returning sisters, read their dances, feel and count their vibrations. Then she would know. She poised her antennae and noticed that another sister, Boxy, who had been in the field for three days like Sister Forager, had similar missteps like Sister Tammy. Sometimes Sister Boxy flapped her wings with vigor, producing a strong, steady buzz, but at other moments her buzz was swallowed by the restless hum of the other expectant, confused sisters watching the dance. Sister Boxy waggled her body up and down, roaming about, clumsily bumping into the others as she turned with an uncoordinated rhythm.

Her wings humming with certainty, Maxine pivoted toward Sister Forager and buzzed, “You think faltering in the waggle is because of old age? Look at Sister Boxy.”

“What you should do, Maxine, is focus on those who are doing it right. That’s what I do,” Sister Forager buzzed. “That’s what I always do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean focus on the sisters who are doing the waggle right.”

“But all of them should be doing it right.”

“The day I first started foraging, I got lost because I got wrong directions from the sisters. Since then, I focus on only those doing the waggle right. Learn from me.”

“This is wrong, Sister Forager. If our sisters are faulting the waggle, it means something is wrong.”

At first Sister Forager didn’t answer. She flapped her wings, then butted Maxine’s body with her head. “I said focus on those who are doing it right.” She crawled away and Maxine watched as she made her way through the crowds of other sisters towards the exit, her golden-brown body glistening in the rays of the sun. Maxine watched other returning Sister Scouts and noticed the same troubling pattern of uncoordinated dance moves among many of them. Their movements barely communicated the locations of food and water. “What is going on?” She buzzed. None of the sisters responded. Instead, the sisters swarmed in a fevered effort to decipher what the broken waggle dances could not convey. For a moment Maxine thought she was the confused one. That she didn’t know how to interpret the waggle dance. That she was not ready to become a forager. Was she dazed? Was she disoriented? “There is nothing wrong with everyone,” she buzzed to herself. Her wings suddenly felt heavy. She had never worried about anything before. She loved being part of Queen Gina’s colony. Life in the hive had provided everything she could ever imagine having. When she was but larvae she swam in a lake of royal jelly, fed on bee bread in abundance, and drank honey so thick and sweet it lingered on her proboscis long after each feeding. She licked every drop from her proboscis. She developed into a healthy pupa that chewed its way out of the larvae sac, working steadily against the enclosure that had once protected her but could no longer contain her. She was ready for the labor that awaited her in Queen Gina’s hive.

She had carried out every duty with care. She nurtured the larvae, polished the waxen cells until they gleamed, and fanned the hive with steady wingbeats to keep it cool and alive. She had taken care of Queen Gina, serving her honey and royal jelly, hydrating her with water, fanning her when the hive temperatures rose, keeping her warm when the temperatures fell, cleaning her, cleaning after her. She had enjoyed all these duties. Each of them gave her purpose and fulfillment because working was like breathing life into the hive, working was living and loving. She lived a useful life and in Queen Gina’s hive there was plenty to work for because Queen Gina was as fertile as the colony wished her to be. She laid eggs minute by minute. This is why Maxine looked forward to her new duty of foraging for food to feed the forever increasing brood. But she was having trouble interpreting the waggle dance. She crawled around the hive, seeking to draw attention from the sisterhood. No one among the hundreds of her sisters seemed to notice what she was noticing.

“Something is not right, sisters!” Maxine buzzed. Still, no one responded. Every sister was busy. The dancers, the watchers, those who had figured out the dance were exiting the hive, colliding with the returnees. Those who danced aptly continued, those who couldn’t dance continued staggering, and others continued poising antennas, butting bodies, crawling around the dancers, their actions saying Where did you find all this nectar? How far is it from here? They were all lost in their confusion.

As she spun, she collided with two mortuary workers who were maneuvering corpses of larvae, unhatched pupae, and the bodies of adult bees, taking them out of the hive. One of the mortuary sisters paused in her work and jostled Maxine with her mandibles. “Maxine, you’re in the way,” she buzzed. “Don’t you see the load we’re carrying?”

“Something is wrong, sisters. Why won’t anyone listen?” Maxine buzzed back.

The mortuary sister shifted her load and paused. “I thought the same when I saw too many larvae bodies this morning. But the sisters said it happens.”

“I am telling the sisters that something is wrong, but no one will listen to me,” Maxine buzzed back.

“When I saw too many dead larvae yesterday, and today morning, I thought the same, but the sisters told me it happens. That sometimes they just die.”

Maxine poised her antennae and felt the tremor of approaching wings. Vibrations rippled all around her as more mortuary workers made their way past her, each dragging or lifting another still form of larvae or dead adult sister. Her antennae angled forward as she turned back to the sister. “But something could be wrong,” she insisted. “Sister foragers are faulting the waggle dance. Maybe this is all connected. Let’s work together to alert the hive.”

“But I am working, Maxine. Aren’t you supposed to start foraging today?”

“How can I forage when the signals are failing?”

The mortuary sister shifted her load. “Big sisters say the hive survives on work. Let’s just do our work and everything will be alright.”

“Big sisters say the hive survives on work and order,” Maxine buzzed at the mortuary sister who was now crawling away with her load. She remained still for a moment, feeling the vibrations of the hive move around her. Without her.

“The hive survives on order and hard work,” she buzzed to herself. At first, she thought of choosing hard work like the rest of her sisters. She would focus on the sisters who were performing the waggle correctly, memorize the directions to the food sources, and fly out of the hive. “But what about order?” She buzzed. If the hive survived on order, too, then the failing waggle dances, the dying larvae, and the confusion among the foragers were threats she could not ignore. Something had to be done. Some honeybee had to break from the routine and notice the details others overlooked.

Convinced that this new task was as important as any other duty, Maxine’s first instinct was to make sure the queen was safe. She crawled past the brood to Queen Gina’s cell in the middle of the nest. Queen Gina was hunkered safely, surrounded by sister attendants. Some sisters were feeding her with royal jelly, others fanning her, others cleaning after her. Maxine decided that the queen was all right. Soon she would start crawling from cell to cell, depositing her eggs. Maxine continued inspecting the hive. She watched a nectar collector regurgitate nectar into the open mandibles of the honey-sealers. She moved closer and drew in the scent and what came to her was the sweet floral smell. She swept her antennae over the honey, royal jelly, and water, sensing for any hints of danger in the food. But nothing smelt strange.

When she finally left the hive, Maxine knew she was not going to be foraging for food. She paused at the entrance, where light shimmered and the air shifted from warm wax, honey, and brood to the open sky she had only sensed in stories. Sister foragers whizzed past her, their bodies angled and wings flapping toward food locations. She joined the exiting sisters, beating her wings in rhythm with theirs as the hot and dry air touched her body. But her purpose was different. While her sisters carried a hunger for nectar, pollen, and water, she carried the weight of questions. Outside all was calm and silent. Hundreds of sister guards had gathered in a mob, clung to the outside walls, and covered the hive in moulds. Their faint buzz was the loudest noise filtering through the crisp air of the afternoon. All these bearding sisters of hers worked second by second for the well-being of their queen, of the larvae, of the sisterhood. Yet none of them sensed the danger gathering within the colony. That’s why she, Maxine, would have to separate herself from working within the order to working to guard the order.

She began scouting by circling the cone-shaped cluster of her bearding sisters. She flew in widening loops, each pass stretching farther than the last, until she had traced the full curve of the hive. The vibration they produced was even and coordinated. They were not agitated. Their wingbeats were steady. She then patrolled the branches nearest the hive, hovering over the pinnate leaflets, pausing here and there with her antennae poised, drawing in the scents that drifted through the air. All flowers on the weeping wattle were already drained of nectar and pollen. The once-yellow pom-poms she had seen in stories had begun to dull and brown, their brightness gone with the season. Some clung weakly to their stems, others lay scattered on the pinnate leaves below.

Maxine surveyed the nearby trees on the hilltop, careful to release pheromones to mark the areas she had checked. In the distance, on the right side of the slope, lay a field of tall grasses with multi-branched stems and hairy leaves. Maxine wondered if danger lay amidst those tufts so lush, so wild and dense. She flew down and hovered over the tufts, careful not to get very close to the spikelets, pausing to poise her antennae towards the pointed ends. The grasses were flowerless. Often, she landed on a blade and swept her antennae across its surface to sample its scent. Where the stretch of grasses sloped downward, she spotted a few scattered flowers. She was tempted to fly over and dust her legs with any available pollen or suck any available nectar into her sac. She brushed her antennae together and reminded herself she was not foraging for food but answers. Further below, the shores of Sippi came alive, the land embracing the waters of Lake Victoria. How she wished to fly over and witness all that she had heard about in the hive stories. She would love to see the ducks and pelicans, not humans. But she wouldn’t be going distances before surveying what was near the hive.

A wide stretch along the left side of the slope broke into tier upon tier of cultivated land where humans grew their crops. Maxine already knew this was a no-go area. The terraces cascaded in rows of tall, leafy stalks with ears of corn along the stems and crowned with tassels at the top. Sister scouts always cautioned about that stretch of land. They said the human who tended it coated the plants with a sharp, bitter spray that clung to leaves and blossoms. Maxine wondered. Had some of the sister foragers ignored the warnings and flown into that forbidden field?

Besides the bitter sprays, the sister scouts warned of the praying mantis that could devour a honeybee alive. A praying mantis, they said, has spiked forelegs that grabs a bee without warning, pinning its wings before they can beat free. They said its jaws work slowly, tearing through thorax and limb. Then there were the dragonflies, swift hunters with stick-like abdomens and powerful legs that seized you midair, and the sharp teeth which tore you to pieces. There were also the wasps. Those thin-waisted hunters that seized you, stung you dead and fed your body to their own brood. Wouldn’t wasps be friends or sisters to bees? After all they shared a similar body shape and some features. But those predators with their tiny waists were tyrants, Maxine had heard. Only days ago, sister guards had attacked and killed a wasp they caught kidnapping larva from the hive. The wasp put on a fight but before the sisterhood stung her to death, she had taken two lives from Queen Gina’s hive. Maxine shivered. Here she was, alone and unprotected in case she fell into the traps of such predators.

As she turned to hurry back towards the hive, she saw a hive beetle nestled on the strand of an elephant grass. The insect sat in a still manner as if it was dead. The edges of the grass strand were jagged, which made Maxine suspect that the hive beetle had eaten the leaf. It was alive after all, well-fed, sated, and calm. A thought came to Maxine that the colony may have been infested with these honey spoilers. And if this was so, she needed to alert the sisterhood. She would not settle until she had every sister’s attention. Maxine beat her wings with renewed energy. She had been wrong all along. No one in Queen Gina’s hive worked alone. She belonged to a sisterhood, a family, a colony. She needed to inform her sisters, and together they would produce enough propolis to entrap the beetles. This time the sisters would listen because they all dreaded hive beetles because beetle larvae caused honey to ferment and go bad.

At first Maxine felt convinced that she had found out the source of danger in Queen Gina’s hive but as she flapped her wings, dodging through the grasses, she saw more beetles and noticed that they were all greenish brown. She paused and hovered midair. She remembered. Hive beetles were reddish brown, dark brown or nearly black, so her sisters said. Then it dawned on her that what she was looking at were leaf beetles. Leaf beetles were not among the adversaries her sisters talked about. She continued her journey back to the hive, but every beat of her wings felt heavy. She would never be a heroine like Sister Tammy. She was Maxy. Maxi. Maxine. Stories would be told about Sister Maxine who failed her foraging debut!

As she approached the hive, Maxine noticed something strange. She saw a mass of bright yellow, round like an oversized clump of pollen. It rose high above the entrance. From the big mass extended long shapes that kept bending and shifting. More elongated shapes moved below them. Maxine hovered, uncertain. Was this a human? Was this the human the sisters spoke of in story-telling dances? But they never said humans were yellow. Yes. She remembered. Humans in some of the stories wore colored sting-proof skins when they approached hives. Yes. This was a human. In the stories, Maxine had heard that some humans were good, others bad. Yes. Humans were tall, two-legged beings with grasping limbs that reached into hives, tore open combs, crushed brood, and carried away honey. The good humans took only part of the honey and left enough for the colony to survive. Was this one a good or bad human?

Maxine watched as the human went down the tree, moving his limbs in between the branches, and finally settled on the sturdy gnarl on the tree trunk. Now Maxine could see his pollen-globe head towering above the hive entrance. She maintained her distance and waited for a signal from the sister guards who had already started flying towards the human. If he was a threat, Maxine would join her sisters and together they would sting through that yellow skin of his. She was ready to die protecting Queen Gina’s colony. She hovered over a cluster of brown seedpods and poised her antennae.

The human wielded something toward the sister guards. Suddenly, a fine mist drifted through the air. The sister guards flew about him. Some settled on the leaves, on twigs, on the hive walls. There they began to groom themselves, legs sweeping over thorax and wings, antennae drawn carefully through their forelegs. Then their movements slowed. Some bent inward, tasting what clung to their bodies. Maxine watched closely. The sister guards were not striking. They were not stinging. They were not sounding the alarm. Whatever the human had released, it had not driven them into attack. Was this a good human? The human reached toward something hanging above the hive entrance, half-hidden behind a fringe of leaflets. A red glare blinked to life. The light flickered intermittently. Then came a sharp, piercing noise. It cut through the air and into Maxine’s body. The vibration struck her wings and legs at once. The sound pressed against Maxine’s thorax. For a moment, she could not move. Below her, the sister guards stopped, wings frozen mid-fan, antennae lowered. Their hum vanished under the strident noise.

When Maxine came out of the shock caused by the noise, she noticed, a short distance across the field of grasses, a group of returning sister water collectors. She watched as they beat their wings in what looked like exhilaration. Their legs hung bare, their bodies free of pollen. Their bodies glistened in the sun, and their abdomens were swollen with water. Maxine waited until they drew closer. Then she beat her wings and lifted off, skimming over branches and twigs before rising to meet them midair.

“Stop, sisters, stop!” She buzzed and flapped her wings hard to show them the urgency of her request.

“Out of the way, Maxine,” One of them said. “Water is urgently needed in the hive. You know how hot it is this afternoon.”

“Something is not right at the hive,” Maxine buzzed.

“What are you up to, Maxine?” Buzzed one sister water-collector. “This morning, I heard you buzzing in the hive, shouting that something is wrong. Instead of working you are moving about. Everything you see is not right. What is wrong with you?” Just then, the red lights flickered again but this time the strident noise didn’t follow.

“Did you see that?” Maxine buzzed. “That’s what I am talking about. And that’s just the light but when noise comes, it’s bad. Very bad. Very very bad. There is an intruder at the hive.”

“The sister guards will take care of that,” Sister Water-Collector said.

“They haven’t done anything. That’s what is bothering me.”

Another sister water-collector buzzed. “That light comes from a thing that belongs to humans. It’s been there since I started collecting water, three days ago.”

“I’ve seen that red light, too,” another sister said. “But never heard any loud sound.”

“What about the human?” Maxine buzzed. “Have you seen him in front of our hive before? Remember our big sisters told us we can’t trust humans. Should we trust his red light? Wait till you hear the noise.”

“Where is the human?” Sister Water-Collector buzzed.

“Come,” Maxine buzzed.

They all followed grudgingly. Maxine surged ahead, her wings cutting the air faster now. She led them back to the cluster of leaves where she had hovered before and settled briefly on a twig. “Wait here,” she signaled, lifting her antennae. Then she circled the leaves. She dipped lower, then higher, tracing the space with widening loops. There was no movement. No scent. The human was gone.

“He was right there.” Maxine pointed at the tree branch where the human had been only seconds before.

“Come on sisters. Let’s go cool the hive before Queen Gina gets burnt up in the heat,” Sister Water-Collector said. They all flapped their wings hard and flew towards the hive entrance.

Maxine buzzed in uneasiness as they flew away from her. The dry air was getting to her. She had to admit that water was needed to cool the hive and the sister water-collectors had to go and she couldn’t blame them for leaving her alone with her questions. It was a hot day. She found shade and security underneath a leaflet but then realized the human, wherever he was, could have noticed her hideout. She left the spot and flew up above the leaves until the uneven canopy of the umbrella thorn acacias and weeping wattle tree was below her. She found a new shelter amongst the leaves of the tallest tree nearby. She settled on a leaf, not quite sure of what to do next. If the human was no danger, then what was? If his machine with its red light was no danger, then what was? If his machine with its strident noise was no danger, then what was?

Minutes passed, and Maxine could not settle. The sense of looming danger hummed through her, along her antennae, through the hairs on her thorax, down her legs. She crawled along the curve of the leaf, antennae sweeping in short, urgent arcs. Her wings quivered against her sides. She couldn’t be still. She had never spent a minute without work, without having her limbs walking around the hive, her proboscis sucking water or honey to feed brood, her limbs cleaning the cells, her wings fanning Queen Gina. She should have listened to Sister Forager. She should have watched the sisters who were doing the waggle right. By now she would have been out in the field foraging for food. She had failed her sisterhood. She had failed Queen Gina. She considered returning to the hive but how could she go back with bare limbs, an empty honey sac? No food, no water, no information to share, no answer?

“Be brave like Sister Tammy,” she buzzed to herself. “Go study the red light.”

When she beat her wings to lift off, her body brushed against another’s antennae. She turned and met more bodies. A head knocked lightly against hers. Antennae crossed and uncrossed. She was surrounded. She had been so distracted; she didn’t hear the buzz of their wings as they approached. Wasps? Maxine froze. For a moment she thought she was already paralyzed, already turned into protein these tyrannical wasps would take for their babies. She released pheromones, hoping that the sister guards would come to her rescue. Perhaps she may be saved by any returning sister foragers who would alert the sister guards of these enemies.

She steadied her wings when she realized that they were fellow bees. Two of the stranger-bees paused in front of Maxine. They looked different, almost golden-yellow with bands of brown that were darker than hers. They were small, too. Really very small, the small of her younger sister siblings who were only a few days old and not yet ready for outside duties. They surrounded her, moving close and closer together as if they were preparing to gang up on her. Another thought came to Maxine that these were the robbing honeybees that ripped open cells, consumed all the honey and left the owners to starve. In the stories, robbing honeybees were called the nuisance sisters. These nuisance sisters had sensed the loosened order in Queen Gina’s hive and had come to rob. Robbers preyed on the weak and vulnerable – so big sisters said. A tremor passed through Maxine at the idea of weakness in Queen Gina’s colony. What if the bees she saw moments ago were not her sister guards but robber bees lurking about the hive, swaying their nuisance bodies and beating their nuisance wings like wasps? Queen Gina’s hive cells could by now be drained of all honey and reduced to shards of wax and jagged combs. Her sisters could now be dead or dying. Queen Gina’s brood could by now be languishing helplessly on the floor, Queen Gina could by now be ripped to pieces and she, Maxine, was here about to face her own death. And she deserved it for failing to protect her sisterhood. “Queen Gina’s colony is strong,” Maxine buzzed to herself.

“Steady,” one of the smaller bees buzzed, brushing her antennae lightly along Maxine’s thorax. “My name is Namuli. We are your sisters. We bring no sting. We bring no harm.”

The others withdrew, leaving Maxine face to face with Namuli.

“I am Maxi. My sisters call me Maxine,” she said, and then hunkered down as Namuli’s antennae stroked hers, as Namuli’s legs patted her as if they were sisters from the same hive. The tenderness in Namuli’s touch reminded Maxine of her own sisters’ limbs brushing pollen particles from her thorax, abdomen, and head. Of their mouths picking dust from her wings during grooming. Maxine found herself yielding to a stranger, so she shook her body in restraint. “You are not from my colony,” she buzzed. “Aren’t you too young to be outside the hive?”

“We are small, but we are not young.” Namuli butted her body against Maxine’s again, this time with vigor as if to let Maxine feel the strength in her wings. “You are bigger but younger than all of us.”

“How is that possible?”

“We are native daughters of this land. Our lineage has always been small.”

Maxine crawled around, feeling each one of them with her antennae. Were these the African sisters she had heard about? The story she had heard went that African sisters were killer, dangerous bees who never rested until they had killed all their enemies. “Are you the African sisters?” The rest of the bees didn’t respond so Maxine turned back to Namuli.

“I’ve heard stories about you.”

“If you have heard about us from humans, then you don’t know us. Humans call us killer bees, you know, but humans are humans. They only say and do what serves them. They baptized us with the most complicated name. Who calls you Apis mellifera scutellata?”

“What does that mean?” Maxine buzzed.

“African honeybee,” Namuli said. “And you, I know where you are from. I can tell from your size that you are African European.” The rest of the small bees brushed their antennas over Maxine’s body in acquittance.

“My maternal queen ancestors came from Europe to Africa,” Maxine said, priding in her own knowledge. She had the urge to tell the rest of the story of her ancestors. How they were shipped across oceans and seas and brought to East Africa to work in the fields, to pollinate flowers, and to produce honey. They were brought to profit the human! The selfish human, who takes what isn’t theirs. “My great-great-grand queen mothers mated with my African great-great grandfather drones to produce my kind, the Western honeybees. You are right. I am African European.”

“To us you are a sister. Every worker bee is a sister, and every drone is a brother. Such distinctions as African, as African European, as killer bees, as western honeybees, don’t matter.”

“We heard that humans call you killer bees. Why?” Maxine buzzed.

“Humans will always fear what they do not understand. We sting only when we are pressed. We defend our own. We protect our own. Don’t all creatures? In fact, that’s why we are here,” Namuli buzzed. “Are you from that hive in the weeping wattle?”

“Yes,” Maxine hesitated. She noticed that a few of her African sisters carried food. She saw pollen baskets on their legs. She realized she had been so wrong to think of them as robbers in the first place. Robber bees never stole pollen, because loading it onto the pollen baskets took considerable time that robbers couldn’t afford. Perhaps the African sisters were neighbors she had just discovered. “Do you live nearby?”

“Not anymore. We had a home in the shrubs down the slope. One evening we heard sharp snip-snaps in the air. Then a sudden, thick smoke bellowed. We drank all the honey we could and fled, thinking it was a forest fire. Later we learned it was a human who destroyed our home to plant his own food. Humans are selfish. They do only what serves them. They don’t care about us.”

Maxine crawled around, taking in the bush thickets, the shrubs and other smaller green trees down the slope. Moments earlier, she had seen the maize field. She would never have guessed that for those sturdy stalks to stand tall and support their leaves, flowers and ears of corn, a sister had to be made homeless. She wondered if the human she had seen earlier was here to light a fire and destroy Queen Gina’s residence. “My big sisters say this hill is supposed to be free and safe from humans,” she buzzed. “But I saw a human there next to our hive. What if he is here to burn down our hive?”

“He won’t. He is not a farmer.”

“How do you know?”

“Our great-great ancestors lived on this hill for centuries. Generations have lived here safely for years and years, but it’s no longer safe. We came here to warn your colony of the impending danger to your lives. Humans are destroying us. The one who ruined our home is a farmer. Now, there are other even worse humans who have started carrying out studies that put our lives in danger.”

“Studies? I haven’t heard of anything like that.”

“They call it research. Humans and their complicated words. They study our behaviors as if they want to copy our way of life. But their studies are dangerous to us.”

“Wait,” Maxine buzzed. She pointed her antennae in the direction of the flickering red lights. “There is a thing right above our hive. Do you know anything about it?”

“That machine is the reason we are here. It is a study equipment. Humans call it cellphone. Those machines use radioactive waves which are dangerous to us. They interfere with our sensors. With time you will see that sister foragers and scouts will leave your hive and never find their way back. Or they may return with no pollen or nectar because they can’t find their way to a source of food.” Maxine brushed her forelimbs together as she felt a surge of elation go through her.

“Does the machine also interfere with the waggle dance?” She poised her antennae in expectation.

“Yes. It distorts our sensors, our navigation, our communication, everything.”

Listening to sister Namuli, Maxine wanted to beat her wings and fly in excitement. She had been right all along. Very right. Very very right. She wished the African sisters had been here only minutes earlier to convince the sister water-collectors. She crawled, then danced, then brushed her antennae together. She didn’t know how to react to the affirmation she had just received.

The rest of the bees crawled around Maxine, butting their heads in unison as if to emphasize the urgency in the warning their sister had just given. Maxine noticed their baffled movements. The intensity of their vibrations made her realize that she had reacted in an inappropriate way to the bad news.

“I shouldn’t be dancing,” she buzzed. “I am just happy that my intuition was right. This morning, I was supposed to start foraging. As I was watching the waggle, I noticed that some sisters did it wrong. Something in me knew that something was not right. But I didn’t know where the problem was. My sisters didn’t believe me.”

“The problem is the human who placed that machine at your hive. We don’t know how long it has been there because we discovered it today, but from what you are saying, it has been there long enough to affect the sisters’ sensors.”

“My sisters didn’t believe me. Some sister water-collectors saw the machine and the red light, but they said it’s no danger. The sister guards saw the human, but they didn’t attack him. Maybe they thought he is a good human.”

“He tricked them. He must have sprayed them with honey.”

“Yes.” She remembered how the human wielded something towards the sister guards. How they groomed themselves, limb to wing, legs scraping, proboscis licking, limbs combing. “Yes. He did.”

“Humans don’t care that our lives are in danger. You would think they would respect us,” Namuli said.

“They think they own us,” Maxine said, remembering the stories she had heard about humans. She remembered one beekeeper human who took care of honeybees. He had started as a good human, built the bees beautiful homes and fed them with a sugary, thick substance as sweet as honey. Then he changed. He started collecting pollen, trapping it off sister foragers’ legs, almost leaving nothing for making bee bread. He took propolis and wax. He extracted royal jelly, displacing queens and larvae from their cells, scrapping the jelly, sometimes damaging the larvae, and leaving empty cells. He took venom. He even ate brood. It was not enough that he took everything the sisterhood produced, he even ate the brood. Who murders and eats other creatures’ younger ones? “Humans are bad. Very bad. Very very bad,” Maxine buzzed.

“Just because they plant the trees and flowers and plants which give us food, they think they can own us. But their plants can’t reproduce if we don’t pollinate them,” Namuli buzzed. She swept her antenna over Maxine’s thorax. “Do you know we existed before the humans?”

Maxine scratched her head, trying to remember if she had ever heard a story about who had come first, but none came to her. She was never one to turn down a story, especially one that promised to teach her something new, but she wouldn’t continue digressing from the discussion about saving Queen Gina’s colony. “Some sisters couldn’t perform the waggle dance well. Is it because of the machine?”

“We know for sure that that machine can wipe out a colony. You need to find a new home immediately.”

“A new home?” Maxine buzzed in frustration. She crawled in a circle, thinking about her sisterhood. “Can’t we just get rid of them?”

“The machines? They are heavy. You can’t do anything about them. The only solution is for you to vacate Kibbo Hill.”

For a moment Maxine wanted to believe that all this was a dream. That Queen Gina’s colony was safe. She had woken up early in the morning anticipating her foraging debut which turned into an indispensable investigative venture. She didn’t know the problem would be of such magnitude as uprooting a whole colony. How she wished she could just fly away from these African sisters, return to the hive and live her life? She could clean up debris from the cells or help unload nectar from returning foragers. She could fan the excess moisture off nectar until she watches it turn into thick sweet honey. Or she could simply groom her sisters as she listened to stories. And didn’t she have her own new stories to tell after this expedition? Who wouldn’t want to listen to the story of the dangerous machine? Maxine didn’t realize she had started pacing again, until she felt several antennas stroking her.

“Maxine, you need to tell every sister that if they wait longer, your queen will starve to death, and your colony will be no more.”

Don’t you finish that sentence! Maxine wanted to buzz. Instead, she started crawling again, dreading Queen Gina’s fate. Damn the humans! When would dearest Queen Gina stop running? She paused and buzzed, “Is there a place a honeybee can stay safely from humans?”

“We know a few places, but everyone must be ready to move again, and again, if need be,” Namuli said. “Because it’s not just the studies, not just that machine. What our ancestors foretold is beginning to happen. Have you ever heard of nuclear radiation?”

“Nuclear radiation?” Maxine buzzed, searching her memory. The word radiation sounded familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. It lingered somewhere in her mind, both reachable and unreachable. It might have been whispered in stories about humans or spoken in warnings about no-go areas beyond Kibbo Hill. Perhaps it had been mentioned in stories about her ancestors. She wasn’t sure. “Nuclear radiation?”

“We suspect that humans have brought even stranger machines into places we haven’t yet discovered,” Namuli buzzed. “They call them nuclear power plants, but we don’t know where they are yet. Other groups of sisters are still out there searching for signs. With all these disruptions, we will not survive if we don’t help each other. Your sisters couldn’t communicate because they probably couldn’t remember the directions to the food source. That means the waves have affected their sense of direction.”

“More harmful machines?” Maxine buzzed.

“Yes. We are descendants of those who have been affected by a machine like the one at your hive. Our ancestors left a legacy. We investigate, find information, and use it to save our sisters.”

“A sister told me there are too many of our young larvae dying.” Maxine’s buzz came in a half whisper, as if she was buzzing to herself. “Is it the machine?”

“We do not know for sure about that, Maxine, but it can happen if there isn’t enough food for them to eat.”

“We have enough food,” Maxine buzzed, almost defensively. “My sisters work very hard.”

“Maxine. Our duty here is accomplished. We must go find other hives. Tell your sisters that if they don’t act very urgently, soon you won’t have food and water for your queen and she won’t lay more eggs, and your younger ones won’t live to hatch, and your colony will be no more.”

The rest of the African sisters head-butted Namuli as a sign that they were all privy to what she was saying. Maxine joined them. She started picking specks of dirt from Namuli’s body, grooming her in appreciation. She worked briskly, grateful to the African sisters for solving her mystery, but now that she had the answers, they weighed down her wings. The elation she had felt earlier had waned. It was now replaced by a swirl of fear and uncertainty. Uprooting Queen Gina was one thing but convincing her sisters that the human and the machine were deadly was another! She paused, her antennae resting on Namuli’s legs, and said, “I need your help, sisters. I need you to help me convince the sisterhood that the human and his machine are here to harm us. I need you to help me convince the sisterhood that we must move. Soon. Very very soon.”

“They will attack us,” Namuli said. “They will think we are intruders, or robbers. We avoid approaching hives, lest we be misunderstood. That’s the reason we cornered you here, Maxine. We were lucky to find you alone. We were even luckier because you understood our warning. Sometimes some sisters disregard our warnings. They don’t believe us until it’s too late. We have lost a few sisters who have tried to do what you are asking. Sorry sister, but we can’t go near your hive.”

Maxine combed through her registers, searching for an idea about how to handle the situation. How had her ancestors resolved similar dilemmas? She revisited the story of Queen Gina and Sister Tammy. How had Sister Tammy managed to convince her sisters to take Queen Gina to safety?

An idea came to her that she could fly back to the hive and bring a few of her sister guards to meet the African sisters so they could get to hear the warning firsthand. But how would she convince them to abandon their hive duties in the first place? She had not even managed to convince Sister Mortuary, who had already suspected danger. Nor had she persuaded Sister Forager, who had once gotten lost after misreading the signals to a food source. She poised her antennae and wiggled her wings until another idea came to her.

“I know!” She buzzed. “I know how I will get my sisters to listen. You said we existed before humans. Tell me the story, please.”

“But how will you convince them?”

“If you tell me the story, your mission will be accomplished.”

“Our mission is already accomplished. We have given you the message.”

“Listen. Each and every one of my sisters would give anything to gather for a story, so long as it is not told during working hours. When the sister foragers return tired and heavy with nectar, when the sister guards loosen their watch and the sister nurses settle the brood, and the sister attendants finish feeding and cleaning after Queen Gina, that is when we tell stories. So tonight, I will gain their attention with a story. Then I will tell them about the human, and the machine, and the other machines. They will listen.”

All the African sisters head-butted Maxine in unison, in a firm gesture of agreement that showed they were convinced her plan would work.

“Once lived Mantis, Bee, and other insects on an Island,” Namuli started.

Maxine stayed still and listened, occasionally stroking Namuli’s antenna to show that she was ingesting every word of the tale and that she was enjoying it.

Mantis learned that he had relatives across the waters so he wanted to go and meet them, but he could not fly. He asked Bee for help, because Bee was wise and had strong powers. So he agreed to help Mantis. He carried Mantis across the waters. After searching for land for a long time, Bee got weary from carrying Mantis, who was by now in deep sleep. Bee stayed resilient, until he found a white flower floating on the water. On the flower was a seed. Bee rested Mantis on the flower petal and placed the seed alongside him for safety. Bee died. When Mantis woke up, he had turned into the first human.

After listening to the story, Maxine brushed her antennae over Namuli’s head. She said, “Our ancestors should never have placed that seed beside Mantis.”

QUOTE AS:
Glaydah Namukasa. Maxine’s Foraging Debut. The Living Commons Collective Magazine. N.5, July 2026. p. 133-154