Information is communicated through their antennas and dances are performed to let other bees know where to locate the best places to collect pollen. The author vividly captures the extraordinary way in which bees communicate not strictly through language but more through scents and chemicals. In doing so she creates a compelling tale which gives a fascinating perspective on social interaction, hierarchies in society and will likely spark a keen interest in melittology (the study of honey bees) that you never thought you’d have. Paull’s novel does this by showing you the way Flora 717’s thoughts and feelings are inextricably tied to the collective hive. The movie was a fun way to express aspects of human angst in an indirect way via anthropomorphism, but it didn’t give you much appreciation for the way consciousness must work differently amongst insects compared to humans. The concept felt to me to be too similar to the 1998 movie ‘Antz’ in which Woody Allen is the voice of an existentially-troubled worker ant who questions life’s meaning when you are an anonymous being amongst millions. It sounds like a dubious premise upon which to base a novel and I was sceptical at first. Laline Paull’s novel “The Bees” is the story of an ordinary low-level worker bee named Flora 717 and her extraordinary journey.
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