Bees That Teach a Lesson in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

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“Lets imagine for a moment that we are tiny enough to follow a bee into a hive. Usually the first thing we would have to ge used to is the darkness”(Kidd 82). The bee is an insect that spends all day working: working to create a home, working to spread pollen and working to create honey. A bee's life and the society of bees can be closely related to the life of humans. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the author conveys her lessons about human life through the imagery of bees.
Bee's need a queen in order to survive. While there are thousands of worker bees per successful hive, the queen, lays the eggs and the thousands of bees worship her; August teaches Lily, “'...they all depend on her to keep [the system] going… they know the queen is their mother’”(Kidd 149). When the queen is removed, “the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness” (Kidd 1). Throughout the story Lily struggles with the absence of her mother, and feels she must know her more to move on. At the start of the story Lily is not happy, and she yearns for the presence her mother; “That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her... and she would kiss my skin” (Kidd 3). It is clear she is not able to function in an unhappy environment without the support of her mother. Lily has lived without her queen bee (her mother) her entire life. She has searched everywhere for that mother figure, just like the bees without a queen.
The life of a hive depends upon the bees knowing and preforming their specialized roles. The queen lays the eggs and oversees all the bees, the drones serve the queen and the worker bees b...

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...onsist of many women that meet every week. The women in the group are able to aid and help each other with no male involvement. Overall, the strong women in Lily's life teach her that, contrary to societies belief, men are not needed in the household in order to survive.
In the ways shown above, The author has drawn parallels between the life of bees and the life of humans. However, she clearly believes that humans are resilient while bees are not. Bees are hindered by their rigid society and their specific roles. Lily proves this is not the case for humans because she is able to let go of her yearns for her mother and to accept August as a mother figure. Unlike the bees, she is able to choose her role and her future. At the end of the book, she is happy in August's home, has gone back to school, writes in her journal and continues the beekeeping that she loves.

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