Black and grey honeybee tattoo on the upper arm, surrounded by berries, leaves and flowers, with the Latin phrase Alis volat propriis below.

Honeybee and botanicals on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large honeybee sits at the centre of the design, drawn with fine detail on its wings, striped abdomen and legs. Sprigs of leaves and berries arch across the top, with flowers along the left and right edges, and a Latin phrase sits in a curve beneath the bee. Dotted guide lines radiate from the bee's abdomen, and the shading uses stippling and hatching in black and grey ink.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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Don't tell Mam, but I've been up the allotment every morning this week before my shift, and the bees are still alive, which I didn't expect. Dad's hives are the ones with the white board on the front, the one he painted with that Latin line he made us copy out at the kitchen table when we were nine. You remember. Alis volat propriis. He said it meant she flies on her own wings, and then he'd look at you over his spectacles as if you were the one who needed telling.

The colony was down to a handful when I lifted the lid on Sunday, the comb gone grey at the edges, and I stood there with the smoker going out in my hand like a fool. Then one came up past my glove and turned three slow circles above the frame, and she went straight for the pear blossom by the fence. I've been following her ever since, in my head at least, along the dotted lines Dad used to rule across his plans for the cold frame, all of them fanning out from one point and meeting nowhere.

I've decided I'm going to Newcastle in the autumn, to the college place they offered me in the spring. I haven't told Mam that either. The hives can go to Mr Pearson's boy, who knows more than I do anyway.

Write soon and tell me what the city air does to your chest.

Love, Nell

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