Queen Bee

Author's Note: This is my piece for Character Development on May from The Secret Life of Bees. Comments appreciated!

Who is the queen bee in the novel The Secret Life of Bees? Many would say a strong character like August. Or perhaps the main character Lily. But truly there is one more person who fits the role of the queen bee better than either of these. I believe that May Boatwright is the queen bee in this novel for a couple of reasons.

To paraphrase August Boatwright every bee in a hive has a job to do, even the queen, though her job is simply to lay eggs day in and day out. In the pink house each person has a job to do. June playing her cello for dead people, Rosaleen doing the cooking, and August and Lily working in the honey house. But May is a little different. Because of her unstable emotions she must be guarded, protected, from anything that could set her off. And so she is more of a floater, sometimes helping Rosaleen, sometimes off doing her own thing. Like a queen bee her job does not seem as hard as that of her housemates but at the same time her mere presence is essential to keeping them all together.

Without the queen bee the hive will surely fall apart, as it says in the book, “if [the queen] is removed from the hive, the workers quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.” ~ Men and Insects.  In The Secret Life of Bees when May commits suicide everyone seems lost for a while.  “Every day for four days straight we kept the vigil” For four days they sat with May, trying to let her go. This is similar to what would happen in beehive that had lost its queen, all the bees would become unable to function without her.

Without May the people in the pink house are lost for a bit. Without May the hive has lost its queen. Without May Lily might not have ever found the truth about her mother. Without May Rosaleen would have turned bitter about Lily and August’s friendship. Without May nothing would, or ever will, be the same.