Solid orange bee design with striped abdomen, antennae and spread wings on a white sheet, resembling a tattoo stencil or transfer.

Bee design on white transfer sheet

Colour · Flash

A bold, simplified bee in a single orange-red tone sits centred on a white rectangular sheet placed over a textured white background. The bee has a solid body with three horizontal stripes on the abdomen, outlined wings and thin antennae, drawn as flat shapes without shading. The design is cleanly separated from the background, with plenty of white space around it.

Bee Insect Wing Stripe Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swarm came aboard at the Downs, settling on the brass rail of the galley as if it had paid for the passage. Hester Bream, who cooked for the Marigold Jane and had never once been asked her opinion on anything, looked at the bees and said they would be called Tallow, because the galley smelled of fat and they seemed to like it. The bosun wanted them smoked out. The mate wanted them thrown over the side. Hester said a ship with no bees in it was a ship with no luck, and she set a spoon of the good honey from the stores-jar on the rail each morning until they stopped asking.

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The bee that stayed close to the range was the largest, orange-banded and unhurried, and she gave it the name of the bee instead of the swarm. It rode the rigging with the crew and came back to the galley at every bell. When the ship came round the Horn in a black wind, the lamps swung on their hooks and the pots went over, and Hester found Tallow sitting on the flour bin, not frightened, waiting for her. She followed it into the bread-locker just as the sea came over the bow and stove in the forward hatch. The cask of lamp oil that would have burned them all had rolled to where she had been standing.

The mate said it was the cold making her see things. Hester said nothing and went back to her pots. Tallow was gone by the next morning, but the ship was never afterwards short of honey, and when the Marigold Jane came into port with her sails in rags, the bosun painted a stripe on the galley beam for each gale they had come through. Three stripes, three gales, and one cook who still set out a spoon at the rail each morning, just in case.