![]() ![]() Though against all the rules-only the Queen can reproduce-her offspring has radical implications for the future of the hive. All would be well with Flora’s progression through the ranks except that she has a dangerous secret: She has produced a baby. And spiders make an ominous appearance, trading prophesies of the weather for the sacrifice of aging bees. Drones pop up now and then, lazy dandies that the hive sisters service. Because she has access to the Hive Mind, she's granted access to the Queen and then serves her and reads the hive’s history in the sacred chamber. Paull uses Flora’s unique abilities to give the reader a working knowledge of the life of a beehive, often to the detriment of character development and drama. Soon she's promoted to Category Two, a nursery for the older grubs, where she again displays a facility beyond her lowly rank. But high priestess Sister Sage senses something different about Flora: She can speak and reason, and Sister Sage sees a use for her mutation, reminding others that “Variation is not the same as Deformity.” Flora is brought to the nursery to tend the larvae in another variation from the norm, royal jelly pours from her mouth to feed the babies. ![]() ![]() When she cracks out of her gestation cell, she's destined to perform only one role in the hive. An imaginative-though not wholly successful-debut in which a beehive is a dystopian society where obedience is essential.įlora 717 is a sanitation worker, the lowest order of bee, mute and hulking and ugly. ![]()
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