Black and grey fine line tattoo of a honeybee with shaded body and transparent wings on the upper arm, shown in a black and white photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bee tattoo on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A honeybee is shown in top-down view with outlined wings, segmented abdomen, antennae and legs. The body is shaded with fine hatched and cross-hatched lines, while the wings are left as open outlines. The tattoo sits on the upper arm just below the shoulder, in a black and white photograph with a soft, neutral background.

Fine line Upper arm Bee Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit under the awning, child, and don't mind the drip. The rain has been falling on Harrow Market since the church bell rang for the morning, and it will go on falling until the bell rings for the night. I was telling you about old Tobias Quill, who sold honey from a barrow by the fish hall, and how he came to be the only man in the county who could hear a swarm before it left the hive.

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The gulls had gone to roost under the iron roof, and the cobbles ran like pewter. Tobias kept his bees in the orchard behind the tannery, and every spring he stood at the gate with his ear to the wind. One wet Thursday a honeybee came out of the grey and settled on the sleeve of a stranger, a girl with a leather satchel and a borrowed umbrella. She would not brush it off. She simply stood still, the way you do when you have learned that a hum can be a kindness.

Tobias watched the bee walk the length of her arm, stop at the shoulder, and open its wings to the rain. He had drawn bees all his life in the margins of his ledgers, patient little hatched lines for the dark bands of the belly, and he never filled in the wings, because light went straight through them. He told her that wings like that were made to be seen through. She laughed and asked what he wanted for the jar. He said nothing, only that she should keep the bee company until the rain eased.

It eased on the Friday. The girl was gone, and so was the bee, but the lid of Tobias's best jar had a pale wing pressed into the wax, clean as a window. I still have that jar. Mind the step on your way out, and tell your mother the honey is for her chest, not for the bees.