The Bees

The Bees (2014) is Laline Paull's debut novel, set entirely within a beehive and narrated from the perspective of Flora 717, a sanitation worker bee born into the hive's lowest caste. The hive operates as a totalitarian society governed by rigid hierarchy, enforced conformity, chemical conditioning, and an absolute prohibition on reproduction by any bee other than the Queen. Flora is larger and more capable than her caste designation allows, and her gradual awakening to her own capacities brings her into direct conflict with the system that produced her. Paull renders the biology of bee society with considerable accuracy while using it as a transparent allegory for any number of human political arrangements. Signed and dated by Paull on the title page, May 25, 2015.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, gilt-decorated boards. London: Fourth Estate / HarperCollins, 2014. Bailey's Women's Price for Fiction shortlist (2015). ISBN: 9780007557721. #10644.
Very fine in like dust jacket.