Colm crawled, dig­ging his elbows into the sod. Clover crum­pled under his chest. A haze of pollen hung in the air, cloy­ing. He resist­ed a sneeze.

Ahead, a fur­ry bee bobbed over the clover. A rotund spec­i­men, abdomen large as a bushel bas­ket. It hummed con­tent­ed­ly, obliv­i­ous to Colm. It wob­bled drunk­en­ly, tot­ter­ing on stumpy, bris­tled legs thick with pollen.

Colm pulled him­self for­ward. He had a jam jar in one hand. Slow­ly, he approached the bee’s fluffy pos­te­ri­or. Some­thing, a mix­ture of hon­ey and fra­grant stick­i­ness, cov­ered it’s bel­ly. Yel­low fra­grance drift­ed from the crea­ture’s fur. Colm sti­fled a sneeze. The bee snort­ed, stepped for­ward. Just out of reach. Colm grit­ted his teeth.

The bee stopped again. Colm posi­tioned him­self behind it. Bare cen­time­ters sep­a­rat­ed his face from the pollen-heavy fur. His nos­trils tin­gled. His eyes watered. A stinger twitched, sheathed in the fur­ry body. Eyes always on that lancet-sized stick­er, Colm slipped a small knife from his belt. Reach­ing for­ward with jar and knife, he gin­ger­ly scraped the sticky accre­tion of half-dried, gold­en goo from the insec­t’s abdomen. 

He scooped the pre­cious goo, scraped it over the jar lip like spare jam. He breathed bare­ly at all. The bee kept snort­ing, tak­ing up a great gulps of flower con­tents. It rus­tled it’s wings, loos­ing some pow­dery gold­en pollen over Coln. Sud­den­ly, his eyes watered—and he sneezed.

His head jerked into the bee’s gooey bel­ly. It stuck there for a moment before he pulled away. The crea­ture gave an indig­nant buzz, took to the air on clum­sy, oval wings. Colm lay in the grass, face and hair cov­ered in bee goo. He sneezed repeat­ed­ly, crawled to his knees. He could bare­ly see. The heav­en­ly-scent­ed goo stung his eyes. A buzzing grew in the air.

Some­thing sharp and strong dug into Colm’s back. It lift­ed him by the back of his shirt. Some­thing else took him by the seat of his pants. Through cloud­ed eyes, he watched as the flow­ery ground dropped down, began to slide away beneath him. He was fly­ing, sus­pend­ed a meter over the grass.

The ride was rough, but short. Soon enough, Colm felt him­self shoved by insec­toid limbs through a much-too-small open­ing. Colm bumped is head. A dron­ing sound filled his ears. He heard the rest of his shirt tear off. He hit the ground, which was slight­ly soft. It was wax.

“Fool.”

The voice was throaty, male. Colm hur­ried­ly pulled him­self to his knees, rub­bing the sting­ing goo from his eyes. He looked for the speak­er.

A pale man stood over him. They were in a room com­posed of meter-wide orange hexa­gons. The place smelled strong­ly of burnt sug­ar and vine­gar. Bees crawled every­where, watch­ing.

The man met Colm’s gaze. His eyes were black and wet, like ink blots. He wore the hairy skins of bees. “Try­ing to milk my lit­tle princess­es,” he said.

The bees advanced on Colm, stingers twitch­ing under heavy bod­ies. The pale man spoke. “In our king­dom, it’s a crime.”

Some­thing thud­ded into Colm’s back. The pain was sharp, then very dull. His vision cloud­ed.

Dron­ing closed around him, but Colm no longer heard it.

Bees

Bees are fluffy, keg-sized insects who live in colonies. They are ambu­la­to­ry, and spend their days trundling through flow­ery fields and snort­ing up the con­tents of flow­ers, mak­ing inane hum­ming nois­es as they do so.

Bee­hives resem­ble house-sized wads of wax sup­port­ed by a spindly wood­en trunk. Hives appear this way, as bees build them on trees. Most trees are too small to sup­port a hive. Thus, bees live in very bent trees. Some­times, bees will con­struct their hives in man-made struc­tures. Old tow­ers, the sort with ancient trea­sure beneath them, are their favored struc­ture to build in.

Some bee­hives are gov­erned by a nymph queen or king. ¶ These Oth­er­world­ly mon­archs believe that the area sur­round­ing their hive is a king­dom, and that their bees are all princess­es. They do not appre­ci­ate human vis­i­tors.

Unlike their mon­archs, bees are placid crea­tures. If one is kissed whilst hav­ing its head tapped gen­tly, it will assume that the kiss­er is hun­gry, and will regur­gi­tate a quan­ti­ty of hon­ey. Bee hon­ey is deli­cious.

Bees are pos­sessed of small wings, which allow them to fly clum­si­ly to the ele­vat­ed entrances of their hives. Bees return to their hives in order to regur­gi­tate gath­ered nec­tar, and to spread news of what they’ve found on their trav­els.

Bee’s com­mu­ni­cate via a com­plex­i­ty of pheromones. One pheromone in par­tic­u­lar, which smells of lilacs, is exud­ed by bees in order to mark their pas­sage, and to denote items which belong to the hive,
This scent is enjoyed by humans, who call it colomine and desire it great­ly.

Colomine

A pop­u­lar scent which smells of lilacs and sex­i­ness. It is a mild, enjoy­able stim­u­lant. It is also said to be an aphro­disi­ac. Due to its prop­er­ties, colomine is very desir­able on the Coast, where it is used as an oil in per­fume. Peo­ple make a busi­ness of gath­er­ing it.

Colomine is pro­duced by bees, who car­ry it in a small sac in their abdomens and secrete it every­where they go. Col­lect­ing colomine either involves the slay­ing of bees and/or a cer­tain degree of trick­ery.

This trick­ery is enabled by bees’ own behav­ior. Bees rec­og­nize any­thing that smells like colomine as belong­ing to their colony. If colomine is rubbed on an inan­i­mate object, bees will assume it is of val­ue to the hive, and car­ry it back home.

If a crea­ture is heav­i­ly scent­ed with colomine, bees will assume that they are anoth­er bee (this is trou­ble­some for out­door soirees.) If a crea­ture smells of both colomine and soap (a pop­u­lar car­ri­er for the scent, in Alagór) bees will assume that they are an injured bee, as soap smells like their dan­ger pheromone.

In either case, an indi­vid­ual so scent­ed will be hauled back to the bees’ colony. This is a pop­u­lar method of infil­trat­ing a colony hive, where­in colomine may be col­lect­ed from bees as they rest.

Honey

Bee hon­ey is a core lux­u­ry in Coastal cui­sine. It is col­lect­ed by raid­ing bee­hives. These raids are under­tak­en sea­son­al­ly, and are con­duct­ed by armored indi­vid­u­als (usu­al­ly errants or oth­er paid pro­fes­sion­als) who com­bat the bees with smoke.

Hive raids usu­al­ly result in min­i­mal casu­al­ties (both bee and human.) How­ev­er, the occa­sion­al, woe­ful par­ty (usu­al­ly ama­teurs) is entire­ly wiped out by bee stings. Most well-estab­lished bee­hives (those which have fend­ed off many an unsuc­cess­ful raid) are filled with human corpses. Bees don’t remove corpses, they just wall them into a hexa­gon seg­ment and for­get about them. As a result, large hives are espe­cial­ly desir­able, as they present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for both hon­ey-col­lect­ing and tomb-raid­ing.

Hon­ey­comb, on the coastal mar­ket, fetch­es half a gold­en pound per kilo of comb.