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            Bees

Regarding all the different theories of political organisation, I've just listened to a fascinating programme on radio. It was only minutes ago, so I'll try and get it all down before the detail slips behind the cloak of mnemone. It was a conversation between a working beekeeper and a professor of animal biology/behaviour. It appears that the appellative 'Queen' is something of a misnomer, for after a brief period of freedom in her early youth, she is held captive by the workers and pitilessly used by them purely as an egg-laying device. Threatening hordes of worker-bees immediately block any attempt at egress.

The life span of a Queen is said to be 5 years, but because of the tremendous physical stress involved in pollen foraging, a worker's is only seven weeks. It seems that the societal encephalon of the hive - the general consensus - the aggregative abstraction - nature's motor - the deterministic wagon-master - God's plan of action - the beckoning Bang - (take your pick,) has determined that it is more efficient for honey-production for grub-nutrition, if the old and weakened workers are unable to stagger back to the colony, but instead pop their clogs out of sight somewhere without the need for energy-consuming corpse removal etc. He also had some very interesting things to say about the mysterious conversion of solitary hunter-wasps to community bees way back millions of years ago. The bee-sting is apparently the remnant of an ovipositor that was used to inject eggs into the living bodies of hosts. He identifies a genetical fortuity as being responsible for the change in modus vivendi, in much the same way as some linguist is now claiming (articles about it are all over the British press,) that it was a genetical happenstance that was responsible for the first appearance of language amongst human beings. On this latter ipse dixit I am very sceptical, but I admit that my dubiousness is based on intuition rather than 'research'.

Like most of the 'works' wrong-headedly wrought by the rollicking, wrathful, omnipotent wraith of the Jews and Christians, bee society, like the rest of red tooth and claw nature, is totally and dynamically merciless as any weasel will tell you. The worker-bees even exercise population-planning and control, for if the prole bees decide to curtail their numbers, they deliberately block off the Queens access to certain reproduction chambers if she attempts to lay eggs there. A change in the weather for the worse will prompt the bees to kill off certain numbers of the growing grubs. The bottom line, in the opinion of the honey-husbander and the professor is that apian society is not at all monarchical, as perhaps certain sections of European society seeking a justificatory model for their corrupt regimes once fondly hoped it was, but rather a terrifyingly ice-cold, ruthless 'democracy' governed by the workers. The Professor described human society as basically: 'a herd association with societal aspirations.' Absolute democracy' claims the professor, (neatly turning political philosophy on its head,) if we study the bee model, is the most dangerous threat to humankind of which the mind can conceive. Life under extremum-socialism would prove to be the end of individuality, the euthanasia of the old, the culling of unwanted young and a whole catalogue of 'logical' anti-individualist and anti-laissez-faire curtailments. Am I moving to the right in my old age? Laying in bed, eating the breakfast delivered to me by my beautiful wife, surrounded by laughing little-ones, listening to my radio (permanently tuned to a cultural programme,) and this fascinating discourse about bees made me look again at my political beliefs. I have always had leanings towards communitarianism - towards ideas of 'the greater good.' Maybe this particular pampered intellectual sluggard should pay more visits to the hives - to consider their ways and be wise?