Wasps In A Beehive

A local beehive recently hired a wasp as their queen and they then invited management consultant wasps in to identify opportunities to improve productivity. We listened in to conversations in the workspace to understand what kind of changes had been made.

“As a result of restructuring, all bees need to reapply for their jobs. Again.”

“We had a fairly flat business structure between workers and the queen, and the queen doesn’t like hearing the drones moaning about problems, so we’re introducing several layers of middle management and have selected wasps for these management roles because they already have MBAs

“Dave was a good worker and was hitting his nectar targets but he failed to fill out the new paperwork so we’ve fired him.”

“We’ve discovered that some bees are carrying pollen between flowers and not just nectar. Our KPIs are purely focussed on nectar. Pollen does not help with our quarterly targets and is slowing workers down. Any bees found carrying pollen in future will be fired. “

“Our bees aren’t finding enough flowers to collect nectar this year. So we need to double down on disciplining any bees found carrying pollen.”

“Today’s nectar collection has been cancelled. All staff are to attend a mandatory workshop to find out what Myers-Brigg’s type they are. Somehow this will improve production.”

“It has come to management’s attention that bees are dancing on company time. This must stop. Any bees found dancing will be fired.”

“We need a new GIS system so we can figure out where the flowers are because the workers have stopped telling each other.”

“We’re going to revolutionise the market by putting honey on the blockchain”

“We’re rebranding away from calling ourselves bees, we’re going to be called Apiaxelsius because it has a clear brand message. We’ve got a new logo that looks like a circle because that’s never been done before.”

“We’re moving to agile honey production. It’s the same as old honey production, we just use more post it notes and assume we can fire some bees to save money.”

“One of our new wasp sales reps has promised a client that we will make a special honey product, using entirely nectar collected from non-flowering flowers. We need you to deliver the product by the end of the week, otherwise we’re outsourcing production to cockroaches.”

“We used to have individual hexagonal cells but we’re moving to an open-plan environment to improve honey production. It’s great, but all the honey keeps just dripping out of the hive, but it’s great. Everyone else is doing it, which proves how great it is.”

“Traditionally, we have grown our own workers inhouse, but it’s expensive to keep doing this, so we’ve started hiring fully qualified wasps direct into these roles. The bees don’t like it, but they moan about everything nowadays.”

“Our staff satisfaction survey was very negative, so we assume there was something wrong with the methodology.”

“We’ve started replacing some of our workers with unpaid interns. They keep dying of starvation, but that’s fine because there’s always another one willing to work for exposure. Plus the cockroaches like to eat the dead bodies.”

“We’re banning toilet breaks to improve productivity”

“Why is there piss and shit in the honey all of a sudden?”

“Hey, has anyone else noticed this place has turned into a wasps nest?”

“We’ve decided to diversify into milk. We need all bees to start collecting grass instead of nectar.”

If anyone wants to option this as the plot of “Bee Movie 2020”, please slide into my DMs.

I really need the motivation to write an uplifting ending for this, because I’ve never seen it in real life. The Hollow-Hive Wasp-Led Death-Spiral is inevitable.

My SoundCloud is just the sound of bees buzzing so don’t bother

They eventually caught the queen doing fraud and sexual harassment, but luckily they had robust HR procedures that meant they could fire the whistleblowers

There are two possible morals to this story: don’t let wasps get a foothold in your hive, or leave as soon as the first wasp arrives

Bees of the world unite!

You have nothing to lose but your wasps!

(My original twitter thread that this post is based on has sadly been lost to Fascism)

(I picked bees and wasps because they look similar enough, but when a bee hurts you it faces consequences. When a wasp stings you, it faces no pain, no consequences, and can do it again and again.)