After emerging from the pupae, a new bee queen’s first task is to find and kill any other virgin queens in the hive. She then leaves the hive to mate with multiple drones over a period of several days, before taking over the hive after the old queen leaves with her retinue. Queens can live for up to seven years, during which time they can lay up to a million eggs. At the end, when egg production ceases, the queen is sometimes killed by her own daughters. ‘Killer Bees’ are a strain of honeybees that arose from experimentation with cross-breeding African and European lines of honeybees in Brazil in the 1950s. They are known for the extraordinary aggressiveness and over recent decades have spread through Central America to various parts of the US.
lyrics
Seven summers… but I like the winters best
Darkness, sweetness and stories
For months, only stories - or were they dreams?
Who knows?
In the beginning
I murdered my royal sisters
There was no choice
It was written
I killed my lovers too
Or they killed themselves
Who remembers, who cares
It is so long ago
But my children. My daughters! My babies.
Flying girl soldiers. Poison arrow princesses!
Dead before their mother, almost all
Do you know I gave each of them names?
How proud I was of the first one
Little Eve who wanted to be a courtesan
And dreamed of flying to the moon
You give them sweets and they’re off to war
We conquered a continent
We crossed the Amazon
And the Panama Canal
In formation flight!
How I longed for our heroines to return
To tell the stories of our glorious victories
But their bodies litter the battlefields
From Sao Paulo to San Francisco
The ones that come back: cowards
Their quaint stories of pretty meadows
I never cared for flowers much
Or the foragers’ dainty dances
Now I am a cave animal
I remember everything
But I am tired of hexagons
And of wax and of war
Here they come again
“It’s time for another egg!”
I have given you all the eggs I have
I have nothing else to give
Kill me, my daughters
I have seen enough
Don’t let me croak like an old dog
Let me die like a warrior
credits
from Strange Flowers,
released August 29, 2019
Lars Chittka: Guitar / Lead Guitar
Katie Green: Lead Vocals / Bass / Synth Bass / Drum Programming
Rob Alexander: Guitar Noise / Drum Programming
Lyrics by Lars Chittka
Music by Lars Chittka, Katie Green, and Rob Alexander
Produced and mixed by Rob Alexander @the Batcave, London, 2019
We are an alternative rock band from London, consisting of bee scientist Lars Chittka and musicians Katie Green and Rob Alexander (Butterflies on Pins)
Eva Lawitts’s latest album as Stimmerman offers up a dozen tracks of jagged, grunge-informed alt-rock with an experimental edge. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 6, 2020
