Black dotwork bee tattoo with patterned wings and a striped abdomen, placed on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Patterned bee tattoo on an arm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A stylised bee tattoo in black ink sits on a section of arm. The wings, head and striped abdomen are filled with dense dots and small decorative patterns, with bold black outlines defining the body. The image is essentially monochrome and the bee is centred against plain skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, you will laugh when you see what the sack of flour did to my sleeve this morning. I had the oven door open at four and the bread was already blistering on the peel when Mr Ashdown came down the back stairs swearing about the damp. He wants the lamination done before the bees wake, he says, as though bees keep bakers' hours. I told him the only bees in Hebden Lane are the ones nosing about the lavender by the dustbins, and he told me to stop being clever and fold the dough.

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But I have been thinking about the bee on the rack by the window, the one Pearl drew for the summer fair poster before she went off to Leeds. She pricked it out in dots and lace, all the wings stippled like frost on a pane, and the stripes on its belly like the ridges on a good crust. Mr Ashdown called it fussy. Yesterday I caught him looking at it for a full minute with his hands in the flour, and he said nothing at all, which from him is practically a sonnet.

So this morning, when the loaves came out gold and the shop still smelled of nothing but warm yeast, I took the spare sheet of paper and traced the bee the way Pearl taught me, one dot at a time, while the kettle went. It is terrible. The wings are lopsided and the head looks like a potato. I have pinned it above the proving cupboard anyway. Come home at Easter and tell me it looks like something I could have made up, and bring the good scissors.

Your loving sister, Ivy

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