Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for Fresh Fiction 2015

Enter a whole new world, with this thrilling debut book place entirely within a beehive.

Born in to the lowest course of her society, Flora 717 is usually a sanitation bee, only match to clean her orchard hive. Living to simply accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything on her behalf beloved holy mother, the Queen.

But Flora isn’t like about The Bees other bees. Despite her ugliness she’s talents that are not typical of her kin. While mutant bees are often instantly destroyed, Flora is removed from sanitation duty and it is allowed to give food to the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen around the wing. She also discovers her way into the Queen’s internal sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous.

But enemies are everywhere, from the fearsome fertility police towards the high priestesses who jealously safeguard the Hive Mind. So when Flora breaks the most sacred laws of all her instinct to provide can be overshadowed by an even much deeper desire, a brutal love which will lead to the unthinkable .

Laline Paull’s chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Exciting and imaginative, ‘The Bees’ is the story of a heroine who, in the face of an increasingly eager struggle for survival, changes her destiny and her world.