In reality and in the book, if you're a worker, you cannot get ahead by pursuing your own reproduction, so you might as well help the queen with her reproduction.
"In a beehive, the workers are happy to help the community, even to die, because the queen carries and passes on their genes."
However, Flora 717 is a rather different bee than her 'sanitation worker' status would imply.
A beautiful book, informative and imaginative, simultaneously... A tale of mother courage, conflict and dystopia among social insects. It is packed with metaphor and an underlying call to recognise the damage to and depletion of our bee populations.
