A once vigorous member of the bee community, now reduced to a mere collector's object, a naturalist's momento mori, a body occasionally used for educational purposes, but more often stored in a drawer in a dry room. But this bee still thinks, can still wonder what is happening when it hears the wind of your voice, though its solitary intelligence is not as vast as your own, or as complete as the hive's, or even as strong as that of the other ghosts, human and inhuman, that pass through the room of its captivity. The square of the picture frame is less complex than the bounded shapes of the hive interior, and not as rationally clear as the skies that hold the sun and all its directions. Nonetheless, restricted to such a bland hell, this dried bee-thought still serves a vital role in the greater community, as a sort of dispersed watcher, looking out of its picture frame, day and night (stored in a drawer, it is hard to tell the difference when it's always dark, but the vigilance of this pictured bee shouldn't be doubted). When you do open the drawer and it catches your eye, who knows what information it is taking out of the touch of your extroverted optical ray.     He had heard that these special bees were both plague-proof, and abundant producers of an unusually clear honey.