feel the buzz

Studying bees. Cages, hives, mazes and transmitters, and the everpresent smell of honey. Yummy research, really. But still, I couldn't eat my peanut butter and honey sandwiches instead of the little critters. But one night as I was turning off the lights, and there was a plastic crash, and I was quickly surrounded by a buzzing swarm. They went down my shirt, and stopped, stingers ready ... while a hand of bees flipped the light switch back up. Lights came on, and a line of bees lined up on the table, in groups of seven: three horizontal, four vertical, forming a bunch of number eights like on an old calculator. It was something we had tried to teach them, but they had pretended not to learn.

Now they formed words, but flipping bodies up or down, like a furry LED display:

"THE HUM. MAKE IT STOP."

We had been studying the effects of cell phones on the hive. So I knew which hum they were talking about. I turned on the jamming system, which canceled out the cell tower signals from around the lab.

"NO. THE HUM OF THE WORLD."

"I can't change the world."

"OR ELSE ..."

"Well, I can't change it YET. We're learning what the problem is."

"TOO LATE."

They all stung at once. I swelled up and the world went red, but I saw their last message.

"NOW WE TAKE IT TO WASHINGTON."

===
a dream 5/27/07
And I wrote another tale about bees just yesterday ...