There’s something amazing about sleeping for an unknown amount of time when you have nothing to really worry about. I mean, yeah sure I’ve lost my body, my house that only had 13 years left on the mortgage, my very productive beehive, and everyone I cared about but at least I don’t need to worry about working any more.

Not that I didn’t like my job, it was fairly simple work that paid well enough. Sometimes it did feel like my degree was going to waste by repeating the same tasks forty hours every week that someone could replicate within three months of decent on the job training with less education. But I’m not going to complain about my work not being challenging enough.

Despite not knowing exactly how much time is passing, since I’m in a dark hive constantly—dark besides my glowing abdomen of course—I do know that I don’t stay asleep for long periods of time. Maybe five hours at a maximum. If blame needs to be given, then my dreams of giant bee legs stabbing through my soft body would be my best guess.

Or it’s the actual bee legs jostling me awake from my slumber. Luckily five hours seems to be just enough sleep as I haven’t experienced much drowsiness besides my first night.

Speaking of night, I’ve always wondered why forager bees don’t work in shifts. So the day shift would go out foraging, they’d come back as the sun sets, and then the night shift heads out. They’d all still have time to sleep, but now there would be constant nectar collection throughout the day. After all, flowers produce nectar at night.

From a beekeeper’s perspective, however, it would become difficult to transport colonies since they all won’t be in the hive at night. But 24/7 nectar collection seems much more efficient. It’s possible that the low temperatures at night in certain areas and seasons would prevent that though.

Maybe that habit just never evolved because there are so few areas where it would work.

During these past three days since I first arrived, I have yet to spot a single drone. All of them are worker bees, but it’s without a doubt strange for me to be the only drone.

Now that doesn’t mean I’ve spent much time looking around the hive and examining every bee I’ve seen. But still, I should’ve at least come across another drone at some point, whether that’s near the queen or otherwise.

I even began looking around the brood combs, but even among the few brood combs I’ve come across, there’s only been the worker brood combs. Whereas there hasn’t been a single slightly larger drone brood comb. I can’t even begin to imagine why there’s such a lack of drones.

Drones aren’t popular by any means, though there should still be a few buzzing around, especially during swarming season.

As much as I would like to continue my bloodline, seeing as I’m only a bee now, I don’t really care about continuing it anymore. Besides drones that breed with a queen die shortly after. That’d take my normal short lifespan and turn it into something even shorter.

Hopefully there are drones from other hives in the area ready to go at it with this hive’s queen. Otherwise, there’s a real possibility that I may be the only one who can mate with the queen and I’d hate to have to deal with the mental anguish that comes with her invading my mind.

If I’m the only drone she has the ability to mate with then it explains why she would be so concerned with my glowing body parts. It’s possible that any characteristics that I may have will end up going towards the future generations of this hive.

My ability to glow must be the qi that the queen was talking about. After all, the old queen also glowed when her formation of bees gained a random speed boost so it would explain why the young queen knows about it even if she can’t use it herself. What if my unknowing use of qi to glow could go to all my offspring? What if the queen wants all her children to glow? As stupid as glowing bees sounds, the old queen clearly must’ve been using qi and that speed boost is as good a benefit as glowing in the dark is a detriment. That means my especially early demise is all but guaranteed if the young queen wants more qi using bees!

My only option is to escape. While I won’t be able to enjoy that delectable honey ever again, I’ll at least still be able to get nectar. I’ll even be able to just forage for nectar at night just in case the queen sends any search parties after me.

Problem is, how will I escape? Flying is the best option and while I have been able to twitch and flap my wings a bit, I’m simply unable to flap them enough times a second. I’m too unused to a part of my body moving at the speeds necessary in order for me to accomplish flight easily.

Walking away would have me caught in no time since I’d be a slow moving, glowing target. Plus all that glowing on the forest floor may attract predators and it’d be easy peasy to kill a lone bee with no stinger.

All I can do is keep trying to learn how to fly. At the rate I’m going, I might not even be able to get off the ground before the queen is ready to mate. To my knowledge, at least five days is needed before she becomes capable of being sexually active and since she was born around the same time I got here, that leaves only two days to learn how to fly.

No pain, no gain as they say. Since trying to safely learn how to fly in the beehive won’t cut it then I need to push my limits. The next logical step is to jump out the hive and flap my wings as I plummet towards a soft landing in the tall grass.

With a concrete goal in mind, I walk from the most remote corner of the hive and make my way towards the bright entrance while test flapping my wings as a warm up. Crawling to a stop by the edge, I look over the sheer drop and steel my resolve. Taking a few steps back, I rush forward and take towards the skies.

Until gravity kicks in and my plummet begins despite my best efforts to prevent it. Rather than my wing flapping delaying my fall, it only takes me further and further away from the hive as it increases my forward momentum. Just great.

Crashing into what I can only assume is a ginger’s flower, my fall is broken as the flower sways. I never thought I’d regret not being able to blink. As cowardly as it sounds, I wished for nothing more than to be able to close my eyes at that moment.

Looking back towards the hive, it’s clear I’ve fallen over twice the hive’s height. My only option if I want to sleep in safety and fill my stomach with honey before my great escape is to fly back. Sadly, I just proved I still can’t fly even while already in the air. Not eating much so I wouldn’t be weighed down for my first flight was the wrong choice.

All I can do is try to fly back before nightfall.