Anansi and the Bee

Now hear of Anansi, who loved to press his long nose where secrets slept. One bright morning, while the dew still clung to spiderwebs like pearls, Anansi spotted a procession: bees moving with the surety of rain toward a mango tree heavy with flowers.

The bees kept to a strict order — each with its small bundle of pollen, each humming a different note like a tiny drum. Anansi, whose fingers were quick and whose mind was quicksilver, saw a chance for mischief. “If I take a bee’s store, I will taste sweetness without the work,” he thought. He reached a long hand toward the buzzing line.

But the bees had a queen whose eyes were old as grain. She spoke not with words but with the rustle of wings. A small bee alighted on Anansi’s fingertip and looked at him as a mirror looks back. “Why do you come?” the bee seemed to ask.

Anansi, who thought himself clever, told a trick: that he could make the mangoes sweeter by singing to them. The small bee laughed in a buzz that sounded like a rice pot being closed; the queen watched. Anansi tried his singing and failed, for his voice broke like a dry calabash. He then tried to snatch at the honey and in the throng he found only a sting — small but fierce.

The villagers heard Anansi’s cry and the children ran to see their hero humbled. The queen bee, kind but firm, taught Anansi a lesson with three tasks: first, to gather a bowl of water without splashing the flowers; second, to plant a small seed and tend it until it sprouted; third, to carry a message from the field to the river without forgetting to greet the elders. Each task was a test of patience and respect.

Anansi, who could think his way through many mazes, found patience like a coin he had misplaced. The water bowl taught him careful hands; the seed taught him to wait; the message taught him to listen. The bees watched as he changed from quick mischief to slow care.

On the third day the queen sent a bee to Anansi’s shoulder. It whispered, if a bee could whisper, that the world works when each lives its work. The mangoes sweetened, not from his trick, but because the village learned to tend the flowers and not to take more than was needed.

Anansi returned to the children with a new story, one with fewer boasts and more wisdom. He told the tale of the bee that taught him how small things done with care can make a big sweetness in life.

And so the elders say, when a man wants honey without work, the bees will teach him patience. The land does not yield its gifts to those who only pluck; it opens to those who sing its songs kindly.

— End —