Black and grey fine line tattoo of a rose stem and a bee within overlapping circles, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose stem and bee on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a rose stem with several open blooms, buds and leaves, with a small bee in a circle at the upper left. Thin outlines and fine shading give the flowers and leaves soft tonal detail, and dotted circular lines frame the design. The tattoo sits centrally on the side of the ribs, with a black lace garment at the top edge and a hand with painted nails resting at the right.

Botanical Fine line Geometric Ribs Rose Bee Leaves Bud Circle Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bees were already out when Nan pulled my veil down and tucked the ends into my collar, which she said was the only proper way to start a morning in the yard. The hives stood in a row behind the old bothy at Sheldwick, painted the colour of weak tea, and beyond them the rose hedge ran along the wall in a tangle nobody had pruned since the war. Nan had planted the dog roses there herself, pink ones, and they had spread until the blooms came over the coping stones like something spilled.

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Nan wanted the honey off before the rain, so I lifted the super frames one at a time and brushed each comb clean. A bee kept circling my wrist, looping tight, then breaking away towards the hedge and coming back. Nan watched from the step with her cup of tea and said, "She's telling someone where the good roses are. Watch where she goes after." I watched. The bee ran a little shaking line through the air, then looped back to the start and ran it again, as if she were drawing the route on the air for the others to read.

We followed her marks, Nan at my shoulder, to a bramble corner by the gate where three roses had opened all at once. The hive had been sending its foragers there all week and I had never once noticed. "They tell each other the way," Nan said, "and nobody ever asks them to."

That evening she pressed one bloom flat between the pages of the honey ledger, beside the columns of weights and dates, and I found it there in October, brown at the edges and still faintly sweet when I put my nose to it.