Sixteenth Proof, Number Four
"He created man from a small seed and lo! he is an open contender." -from The Bee
As the bee tends
on the outskirts
of her metaphysical chores,
she is weightless, harmless, free.
Her chapels are flowers
in space and so small.
Daisy, peony, carnation:
you paper-puzzles, you grand masters
how about me? Is this a Valentine?
Hey pollen pushers, egg minders
in the society of specialists,
who gave you your orders
to sting and mend?
All this subatomic origami, all these stars.
*In honeybees, the drones (males) are entirely derived from the queen, their mother. The diploid queen has 32 chromosomes and the haploid drones have 16 chromosomes. Drones produce sperm cells that contain their entire genome, so the sperm are all genetically identical except for mutations. The male bees' genetic makeup is therefore entirely derived from the mother, while the genetic makeup of the female worker bees is half derived from the mother, and half from the father.[12] Thus, if a queen bee mates with only one drone, any two of her daughters will share, on average, 3⁄4 of their genes. The diploid queen's genome is recombined for her daughters, but the haploid father's genome is inherited by his daughters "as is". It is also possible for a laying worker bee to lay an unfertilised egg, which is always a male.
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