Epigraphs – Secret Life of Bees

Chapter / Epigraph / Brief Explanation of the Meaning of the Epigraph / Prediction of what the Chapter will be about based on the Epigraph
1 / The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness. –Man and Insects
2 / On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony. Eventually, one location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air. –Bees of the World
3 / New beekeepers are told that the way to find the elusive queen is by first locating her circle of attendants. –The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
4 / Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each colony is a family unit, comprising a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers. The workers co-operate
in the food-gathering, nest-building, and rearing the off-spring. Males are reared only at the times of year when their presence is required. –Bees of the World
5 / Let’s imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to get used to is the darkness. . . –Exploring the World of Social Insects
6 / The queen must produce some substance that attracts the workers and that can be obtained from her only by direct contact. This substance evidently stimulates the normal working behavior in the hive. This chemical messenger has been called “queen substance.” Experiments have shown that the bees obtain it directly from the body of the queen. –Man and Insects
7 / How did bees ever become equated with sex? They do not live a riotous sex life themselves. A hive suggests cloister more than bordello. –The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men

Epigraphs continued. . .

8 / Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require its social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die. –The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
9 / The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication—on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information. –The Honey Bee
10 / A bee’s life is but short. During spring and
summer—the most strenuous periods of
foraging—a worker bee, as a rule, does not live more than four or five weeks . . . Threatened by all kinds of dangers during their foraging flights, many workers die before they have reached even that age. –The Dancing Bees
11 / It takes honeybee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey. –Bees of the World
12 / If the queen were smarter, she would probably be hopelessly neurotic. As is, she is shy and skittish, possibly because she never leaves the hive, but spends her days confined in darkness, a kind of eternal night, perpetually in labor. . . . Her true
role is less that of a queen than mother of the hive, a title often accorded to her. And yet, this is something of a mockery because of her lack of maternal instincts or the ability to care for her young. –The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
13 / A worker [bee] is just over a centimeter long and weighs only about sixty milligrams; nevertheless, she can fly with a load heavier than herself. –The Honey Bee
14 / A queenless colony is a pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mournful wail or lament from within. . . . Without intervention, the colony will die. But introduce a new queen and the most extravagant change takes place. –The
Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men