The Science of Bees

I realised I had to write The Bees because when I started to read about the actual creature, there were so many extraordinary entomological facts - like the annual massacre of the males, and the fact the drones DO NO WORK their whole lives, that my imagination was fired. I suddenly saw this celebrity sexual minority, whose entire raison d'être is to mate, and so long as they go for that goal with gusto, the rest of the time they can do as they please. Drones can't even feed themselves, and even defecate in the hive. So first of all I was going to write it from the POV of a drone who somehow manages to miss the massacre - because if a drone actually does this, when it's all over his sisters will let him live. Then, I found out about the 1 in 10,000 rarity of the sterile female worker, who will spontaneously begin forming eggs in her body, to the consternation of certain of her sisters, who even biologists refer to as 'the fertility police'. These real squads of bees will search for the laying worker, hunt her down and kill her, and eat her eggs. This is real biology, and really scary to imagine. And then there's the brutal phenomenon of how the princesses will seek each other out and fight to the death until only one is left alive to rule and be queen. Life behind those beehive walls is really stranger than anything I could imagine - so I just rushed to write the story.