Saturday, October the 2nd, 2004

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The Good Bee

Do bees make moral choices? Do they know the difference between good and evil? Answering these questions was the life's work of Captain Federico Gull, pirate-turned-apiarist, the man who swapped a life being roguish and dastardly on the high seas for one spent limping around on his wooden leg among hundreds of beehives in a field.

Captain Gull had been possibly the most feared buccaneer on the Spanish Main, or what was left of it. He was so fierce that he would eat a mouthful of carpet tacks for breakfast, washed down with the blood of various animals penned in the cargo holds, which he slaughtered with his sharp and shiny scimitar. Unlike the general run of pirates, however, he rarely cackled. Indeed he was not given to laughter, hideous or otherwise. Underneath the terrifying exterior, he was a thoughtful fellow, whose pleasures were found not in fighting and carousing but in resting on his bunk with a good book, such as the Rule of St Benedict, in his cabin strewn with the blossom of fragrant shrubs. Only when there was a rustle in the piles of blossom, and his Lovecraftian shoggoth reared its terrible head and prodded him to bloodlust, did Captain Gull become violent. Sometimes he wondered what had become of the rest of his crew, for there was not a soul else on board his ship.

It was in mulling over the inconsistencies of his own behaviour that Captain Gull began to think about the ideal of the Good Bee. As luck would have it, one winter's day a huge storm engulfed the ship and it was run aground on a remote island, but not before the shoggoth had been hurled overboard by the mighty tempest. Alone at last, Captain Gull clumped ashore, drenched and disconcerted, and camped overnight in a field. Next morning, exploring his new home, he discovered that the island was riddled with swarms of bees. The rest, children, is history.

Source : The Bee As Moral Exemplar & Other Insect-Related Parables For Young & Old Alike, Innit by Dobson