Under the unforgiving summer sun, their small, winged bodies hover from one flowering plant to another, working tirelessly in the sweltering heat as we laze in the shade...

Their work is endless, the product harvested in minutes. Smoked into a stupor while we steal their treasures, and if some of them die, so be it...

Melissa, Queen of Bees,
revered before by human royalty and great innovators,

Melissa, Queen of Bees,
who connects life and death,
whose children killed the demon Arunasura in India,
and were prophets to the gods in Greece and Rome.

Melissa, Queen of Bees,
her bees fell from the sun in Egypt,
aided the first living man in Uganda,
and created man from the back of a mantis in the Kalahari Desert.

Melissa, Queen of Bees,
her children are the origin of magic in Eastern Europe,
a source of fertility and a connection to nature in North America,
and fierce, terrifying warriors in the South.

Melissa, Queen of Bees,
the Great Mother,
the root of being,
the bridge to the afterlife,
we owe her children our lives,
the least we can do is spare them their's.