Small black and grey bee tattoo with detailed wings on the upper arm of a person in a black sleeveless top, seen from behind.

Bee tattoo on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's upper arm, photographed from behind, shows a small bee tattoo near the outer side of the arm. The insect is drawn in fine black linework with grey shading on the body and wings. The plain black top and dark leather jacket sit against green leaves in the background.

Fine line Upper arm Bee Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bee got into the 7.14 at Hadleigh Junction in the first week of June. Nobody on the platform would have noticed except me, because I had been counting my uncle's hives along the embankment since April. It bumbled against the window of the third carriage, drunk on the heat coming off the rails, and the guard, a man called Pruett with a moustache like a yard broom, flapped his cap at it and told it to get off his train.

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My uncle kept eleven hives on the bank behind the goods yard, under the willows where the signal wires ran. He said the bees didn't mind the trains, only the people who swatted at them. He taught me to stand still and let the flight path pass through my hands. Forty years on the railway had made him a patient man and a poor talker, so he let the bees do most of the explaining.

When the doors slid shut, the bee was still inside, tapping at the glass. I walked the length of the platform beside it, matching its speed, until the train pulled away. It kept going with the carriages, wings a blur against the window, then lifted free and was gone over the hedge toward the willows.

Uncle Eli died in the spring. I went down to the bank with a jar of honey and a spare veil and found the hives humming as if nothing had changed. I left the jar on the nearest lid. Something came out of the box and circled my head once, close enough to feel, then turned for the goods yard and the rails.