Old legends say, beware the Fae. All that glitters is not gold, and offers that seem too good to be true are often traps for the unwary. Honey is sweet, and sticky, and if it gets all over your wings, you will be unable to fly away, even if the intentions of the Fair Folk were kind to begin with, the Fae are known to be fickle and precarious. They are mercurial, and their intentions can change with the wind.
On my quest to regain my wings, I was contacted by a golden lady with a silky voice. She offered me food and favours, and at first I was excited and grateful, because I love to flit around with other fairies, and I am drawn to shiny things.
Sometimes though, shiny golden things that flit around are not safe to play with. Not all golden winged creatures produce honey, some of them have weaponised asses. Even the adorable fluffy little bumblebee has a nasty sting, although its primary goal is to make sweet and sticky honey – it will still sting you if the wind changes. It cannot help itself, it must protect the hive, even if the act of stinging you rips its guts out and leaves it to die.
All bees are wasps, when it comes down to it, but all wasps are not bees. A wasp can sting, over and over again, without taking any damage, and it can still return to the nest having used its stinger. Honeybees, on the other hand, get one sting only, and when they have used it, they just die. They aren’t the only kind of bees, but they are the kind of bee most favoured by people who want to sell honey. They are the biggest producers of honey, and they’re the easiest to manage.
If I was a bee, I think I would be a blue banded bee. I only produce a tiny amount of honey as I am not part of a huge hive, and I do not sting unless someone stands directly on me. I tend to bumble around being the rare, shiny, iridescent and bright buzzing little bundle of joy I have always been, and I know that my sting is mild, and that using it won’t kill me or anyone else, so I am not in the habit of letting people stomp on me because they have mistaken me for either a honey bee or a wasp. Blue banded bees are exceptionally rare, so it is not unexpected when people do not recognise them or understand their way of being.
In fact, blue banded bees are so rare, I think a lot of them don’t recognise themselves in the mirror, they want to be golden so badly they will ignore how gorgeous they are with their natural peacock tones, and they won’t use their sting to stop clumsy feet from crushing them at all, until they feel ready to really harm someone. Then once they do sting, they assume there is no coming back from that, because a honey bee would die, and a wasp would just keep stinging and stinging until the nest was safe. A blue banded bee can set a boundary and maintain friendships, because a blue banded bee has a non lethal sting and no aggressive tendencies.
Self knowledge is a beautiful thing. I cannot know whether I’m dealing with wasps or bees or tricky otherworldly creatures, except by their actions, by the sweetness of their honey and the pain of their stings, but I can look in the mirror, admire the pretty blue shine, and buzz off away from stinging creatures who don’t like blue banded bees.