by Lisa Yee
“Cuckoo Bee?” she asked, though she knew the answer to her question.
“Yup! It’s me. Hi, Bumblebee!” he said.
The woman did not move. Bumblebee wondered if perhaps she was also a victim of whoever had kidnapped her parents. Suddenly, Bumblebee noticed that the buzzing had ramped down to a low but still-menacing sound, like a circular saw. She turned to find swarms of bees lining the walls in neat rows.
The room resembled a medieval museum filled with eclectic military antiques, including a rusted suit of armor and an old-fashioned deep-sea-diving suit with a metal helmet. On one wall, flanking a massive coat-of-arms tapestry, were crossbows, battle-axes, spears, and lances. In the corner was a heavy metal cannon with its fuse still intact. What looked like perfume atomizers, along with several globes and magnifying glasses, rested on a desk made of tortoiseshell, pewter, brass, and bronze. On another wall was a yellowing poster of a scenic village, with the message “Visit beautiful Bialya, for the vacation of a lifetime.”
Bialya! That was where her parents had “won” a vacation to, Bumblebee realized. She startled when the woman on the throne spoke.
“Aren’t you going to curtsy to your queen?” the woman asked, lifting her veil.
Bumblebee’s eyes narrowed. Of course it was her. After all, Cuckoo Bee was there, wasn’t he? “Beatriz, what do you want?” Bumblebee’s voice was tight.
“Queen Beatriz,” the woman replied, haughtily correcting the young super hero. “Though I prefer to go by Queen Bee. Now curtsy!”
Bumblebee stood tall. “You are not my queen,” she said. “I demand to know what you’ve done with my parents!”
Queen Bee laughed. “Oh, child. You demand to know? No one makes demands of me. Calm down. Would you like some tea…with honey?” She turned to Cuckoo Bee. “Tea and honey, now!”
“Yes, yes, my queen,” her assistant said. Before he left, he whispered to Bumblebee, “Nice to see ya again!”
“Where are my parents?” Bumblebee asked, her voice rising. She clenched her fists and raised her arms slowly, her sonic blasters ready on full charge.
“Royal Army,” Queen Bee said, regally motioning to the killer bees who buzzed nearby, “stand ready in case our guest has any plans to attack.” She turned back to Bumblebee. “Your parents, they’re fine, they’re safe, they’re on vacation,” she added dismissively. “It’s you I want to talk about.”
“I need proof that my parents are okay,” Bumblebee said, standing her ground.
Cuckoo Bee returned carrying a tray heavy with cups of tea, a silver chalice overflowing with honey, and lightly toasted orange-honey scones. He set it down on a small table next to Queen Bee.
“Bumblebee, we need to talk,” she said, pouring what seemed like an endless stream of honey into her tea, then stirring it slowly. The queen closed her eyes as she took a long sip before setting the delicate white china teacup down and saying, “My, but that is delicious. Wouldn’t you like some?”
Bumblebee bit her lip. How long had it been since she’d had honey? The honey before her was so sweet she could smell it. The golden hues seemed to illuminate the chalice, and the tops of the scones had been drizzled with caramelized honey.
“My parents!” Bumblebee said, remembering why she was there. She chided herself for letting herself be distracted by honey. “I need proof.”
Queen Bee picked up a pastry and took a small bite. “Ah, Cuckoo Bee bakes the best orange-honey scones,” she said.
Cuckoo Bee, who was pacing back and forth behind the throne, stopped to blush. “It’s true,” he said. “I like to bake.”
“SILENCE!” Queen Bee snapped. “No one said you could talk.”
He lowered his head in shame. “Bad Cuckoo Bee, bad, bad Cuckoo Bee,” he said, fleeing into a corner and putting himself in time-out.
“All right, here’s the proof of your parents’ safety,” Queen Bee said, sounding resigned. She pressed a button on the armrest of her throne and an image was projected onto the wall. It was of Mr. and Ms. Andrena-Beecher.
Bumblebee’s mother and father were making their way down a dark, damp alley, accompanied by mutant humanoid bees from the queen’s Royal Army.
“Are you sure they’re tour guides?” Ms. Andrena-Beecher whispered to her husband. “They don’t say much other than bzzzzzz.”
“What else would they be?” asked Mr. Andrena-Beecher. “And the way they are sticking to us is marvelous. They don’t want us to get lost.”
Ms. Andrena-Beecher smiled warmly at her husband. He had a habit of getting lost, especially when they were on vacation.
“Mom! Dad!” Bumblebee yelled. “Are you okay?”
Queen Bee took another bite of scone, then dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a red silk napkin. “They can’t hear you,” she said, sounding bored. “I’ve got a BotBee with a camera on them. But see, I’m true to my word. Not only are they safe, but they think they are on vacation.”
“You’d better not harm them!” Bumblebee’s eyes darkened.
Queen Bee ignored her, instead muting the sound on the BotBee’s live feed while the images still played. She poured more honey into her tea. “I have an unlimited supply,” she boasted. “The world’s finest honeybees work for me.”
“All the bees work for her!” said a voice in the corner.
Queen Bee shook her head. “Not yet, but they will,” she said. “Soon.”
Bumblebee looked to where Cuckoo Bee was still in time-out. He spoke facing the wall. “Our queen used BotBees—you know, robots—to shower her pollen all over. It made the honeybees sleepy,” he said, yawning. “She’s so smart!”
“True,” Queen Bee said, trying to sound modest. “Though you teens keep calling it ‘fake pollen,’ when I prefer ‘slumber dust.’ If all goes according to plan, I’ll have my army of BotBees continue blanketing the far corners of the planet with it, and you know what that means, right?”
Bumblebee nodded. If all the bees were disabled, then they could not pollinate. Without bees as pollinators, the world’s food sources would eventually vanish, thus destroying all life on the planet.
“Why do you want to do this?” Bumblebee asked. With only a little battery power left, she knew she’d have to use it judiciously to survive.
“Control!” Cuckoo Bee shouted excitedly from his corner.
“SILENCE!” Queen Bee ordered. As Cuckoo Bee quaked, she continued. “Why should I do any work when I’m smart enough to have others work for me, like you’ll be doing soon? My BotBees did an excellent job disseminating my slumber dust. Of course, they didn’t spread it everywhere. Just in enough places to catch your attention. Plus, they didn’t get near my personal crop of the world’s most gorgeous flowers. Only the best honeybees in the world have access to them. How else would I get all this?”
With her majestic robe trailing behind her, Queen Bee strolled over to a large metal door and opened it. Bumblebee gasped. She had never seen so much honey in her life.
“So this is what it’s all about?” Bumblebee said as she gawked at the rows and rows of honey jars. “Owning all the honey in the world?”
Queen Bee returned to her throne. “It’s not just about the honey—sweet as it is. It’s about taking over the world. And, Bumblebee, that’s where you come in….”
Bumblebee was taken aback. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“It has everything to do with you,” Queen Bee said. She motioned to her killer bees on the other side of the room. “My Royal Army bees brought me the tech from your lab before they destroyed it. But even after tearing everything apart, I couldn’t figure all of it out. Then I realized: Why should I work at this when you can do it for me? So”—she leaned forward and stared hard at Bumblebee—“tell me your secret.”
“Tell her, or she’ll get mad!” Cuckoo Bee whispered loudly from tim
e-out. “It’s no fun when she gets mad.”
Bumblebee struggled to digest the information. “You want my secret so you can shrink?”
Queen Bee let go of a long laugh. “No, not me. Why would I ever want to get small? As it is, I’m undefeatable. I’m brilliant, I got top grades in school, and I’ve got venomous stingers and my slumber dust.”
Bumblebee could feel anger rising inside her. “Your slumber dust is crippling the world by killing all the crops!”
Queen Bee blushed. “Why, so nice of you to notice,” she said. “Disable, distract, and conquer. As for me shrinking—no, no, no, no, no, I have no desire to get small. I want your technology so I can reverse it!”
“What?” Bumblebee asked. Was she hearing correctly? “You want to get…bigger?”
For a brief second, Bumblebee was distracted by the images of her parents on the wall. They looked lost. She noticed that the number of “tour guides” seemed to have thinned out.
“Not me, silly,” Queen Bee said, looking amused. “My Royal Army. Imagine giant mutant killer bees. They’re a threat when they’re small, but as giants, they’d be a conquering force capable of subduing the world!”
“And what about your BotBees?” Bumblebee asked. “Them too?”
“Them? No,” Queen Bee said with a dismissive wave. “BotBees are servants, not warriors.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Bumblebee. Evil could be so confusing sometimes.
“Argggh!” Queen Bee cried, leaping up from her throne. “Don’t they teach you anything at Super Hero High? Logic this out: one, my Royal Army is made up of giant mutant bees; two, they will take over the world; and three, everyone works for me, their wonderful queen. Is that so hard to fathom?”
On the wall, Bumblebee could see her parents. The BotBee was still videoing them, but they had somehow become separated from the Royal Army. Are they lost or have they escaped? she wondered. And either way, are they in any less danger?
Pleased with her own diabolical plan, Queen Bee was still rambling on. “As you know, each beehive has its own queen. But with me in charge, I will not only be the queen of all the bees, I’ll be queen of the world!”
Watching her parents, Bumblebee felt a slight twinge of hope. With her mom and dad safely away from the Royal Army, she could fight Queen Bee!
“Did you like what you saw at Super Hero High?” Bumblebee asked, stalling while she formulated a plan.
A slash of a smile crossed Queen Bee’s face. “It hasn’t changed all that much….I used to be a student there.”
“But you took a tour…,” Bumblebee began. She stopped herself. “You were there to—”
“Meet you,” Queen Bee confirmed, nodding. “Why would I need to find out anything about Super Hero High? I practically ruled it when I was there.”
“Tell me more about it,” Bumblebee goaded her. She needed time to think.
“Ah, the memories,” Queen Bee said wistfully.
“So you went to my school?” Bumblebee asked.
“No, you go to my school,” Queen Bee snapped. She leaned back in her throne. “I was just like you once, only smarter. You do your school assignments yourself, but I got others to do mine for me. And it was at Super Hero High that I learned to love bees!”
Thanks to a BotBee camera, Bumblebee could see her parents wandering alone on the streets of Bialya, looking lost and worried. But at least this seemed to confirm that they had become separated from the Royal Army “tour guides”!
Queen Bee was lost, too…in her own story. “I was so in love with bees,” she was reminiscing. “Everything bees! Beehives! Honeycombs! Spelling bees! Anything bees! I started the Bee All That You Can Bee Club. Is that still there?” She didn’t wait for Bumblebee’s answer. “After I left Super Hero High, I knew that it was my mission to protect the bees. I mean, there is so much adversity out there, one needs to be careful.”
As Queen Bee continued, Bumblebee turned on her comm bracelet. She tried to relay a message to Batgirl with her coordinates, speaking softly and quickly, before turning it off again to conserve power.
“…so I began protecting the bees,” Queen Bee was saying. “Taking them under my wing. Making sure they weren’t working too hard, seeing that they had plenty of nectar, as only I could. After all, no one cares for bees more than me.” She leaned forward. “No one does more for the bees than I do, and they should be grateful for that!”
“I’m grateful, er…I think,” said Cuckoo Bee from his dark corner. He looked at Bumblebee and shrugged.
Queen Bee was now pacing and ranting as her Royal Army swarmed this way and that, careful to stay out of her way. “I finally realized that I was a queen. The queen. And what does a queen do? She rules!”
And with that, Queen Bee spun a globe of the world that was at her fingertips. Her laughter filled the halls of the castle. She was obviously absorbed in the vision of her own greatness.
Bumblebee knew that now was her chance. She needed to spring into action before Queen Bee realized that Mr. and Ms. Andrena-Beecher’s guards were nowhere to be seen. She turned on her power. There was less than fourteen minutes of energy left. As Bumblebee felt the welcome surge of her super suit powering up, one of the Royal Army bees startled her.
“Knock, knock! Who’s there?” a familiar voice asked. “Bee. Bee who? Look who’s bee-hind you!”
“Beast Boy?” Bumblebee whispered, wide-eyed. Never in her entire life had she been so happy to see a green killer bee.
“Batgirl got your message,” he said. “But it was all garbled and the location coordinates didn’t transmit clearly, so we split up to look for you. The reception here is horrible!”
“Is everyone outside?” Bumblebee asked hopefully. Queen Bee was now staring out the window and pontificating about why it should be an honor for everyone to have her in charge.
Beast Boy bee shook his head. “Waller put most of the Supers out on natural-disaster detail. They’re using what we learned to wash away the fake pollen to get the world’s ecosystems back on track.” He pointed to Queen Bee. “Is she serious?”
Bumblebee nodded. “Sadly, yes. Tell me about the rest of the Supers, but hurry!”
“Supergirl and Wonder Woman are diverting rainstorms to farms, with Thunder and Lightning using their powers to help keep the storms manageable,” Beast Boy said in a rush. “Frost is harnessing ice from an avalanche, and El Diablo’s melting it to feed into rivers. It’s natural disasters to the rescue, but once the Supers are done, they’ll be headed here. That is, if they can find us.”
Bumblebee smiled. Leave it to the Supers of Super Hero High to save the day. But now it was her turn. “Beast Boy,” she said quickly, “I want to take on Queen Bee. But those guys”—she motioned to the Royal Army, who were now hovering near the doorways—“are in my way. Can you distract them, get them out of here?”
“Can I?” asked Beast Boy, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “You just try and stop me!”
“Oh, and there’s something else I need you to do,” Bumblebee told him.
* * *
Queen Bee had worn herself out and was now resting on her throne. “I’m going to get your secret,” she warned Bumblebee as her attention shifted back to the young hero. “But first, it’s time for my afternoon honey break. Cuckoo Bee! Honey. Here! Now!”
Cuckoo Bee ran to the vault and brought out heavy glass jars of honey. He handed them to his queen, who drank them one after the other.
Bumblebee nodded to Beast Boy. “Go,” she said.
“Gone!” he said as he turned into a wasp. “Hey, Royal Army killer bee dudes and dudettes, look at me! I’m one of you,” Beast Boy wasp shouted as he buzzed circles around them.
As the Royal Army began to give chase, Beast Boy wasp taunted and teased, and turned off the live video feed of Bumblebee’s parents, as s
he had asked him to do. “You wasps aren’t fast enough to catch me!” he yelled. “Oops, I meant killer bees, or are you bozo bees?”
Queen Bee looked up from a jar of honey. “What is going on?” she demanded. By then, Beast Boy had led the Royal Army away from the throne room and down a corridor.
“Don’t listen to her,” Bumblebee was saying to Cuckoo Bee as he retreated to his corner. “I know you’re not a bad guy. Stand up to her, I’ll protect you!”
His big eyes began to water. “You will?” he asked.
“I promise,” Bumblebee said.
“YOU!” Queen Bee yelled, pointing at Bumblebee. “This is your doing! Well, enough of me being nice to you. If you don’t respond to my invitations, I’ll just have to take what I need, and that means your super suit!”
Cuckoo Bee was trembling.
“Cuckoo Bee, get over here!” Queen Bee ordered.
He looked at Bumblebee, then Queen Bee, then back at Bumblebee. Cuckoo Bee lowered his head and mumbled, “I am sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Queen Bee spat.
“For this,” he said.
Bumblebee watched Queen Bee’s anger rise as Cuckoo Bee abandoned her, scurrying from the throne room in such a hurry he ran into the wall. He picked himself up and dashed out of sight. “He’s an idiot,” Queen Bee said as she turned to face Bumblebee. “But he’s my cousin’s son, so I had to give him a job. Anyway, now it looks like it’s just you and me.”
“As it should be,” Bumblebee said, stepping into fighting stance. “Let’s get this over with!”
* * *
Beast Boy wasp flew out a keyhole at the far end of the hall and into what was left of the once-impressive gardens—with the Royal Army right behind him. It was now raining, and the killer bees were more than a hundred strong, but Beast Boy wasn’t worried.
“Look, I’m a sparrow!” he yelled. He was so busy laughing that he didn’t realize he was headed straight toward the tall garden wall. Before he could fly over it, the Royal Army surrounded him. The killer bees moved in slowly and deliberately for the attack.