In May, in Northern hemisphere after Winter, most bee hives will perish- they just didn’t have enough energy to make it through the winter.

But if a hive made it through, it’s honey supply is depleted but the maidens who run the hive realize that it might be time for better. And so they instruct all the worker bees to go out and collect as much pollen as they can.

This happens to coincide with the time flowers need pollination. By mid June, all the honey will be restored. After which the maidens instruct the queen to lay and fertilize a queen egg.

Context: An ordinary queen bee lays eight hundred eggs a day but fertilizes non. Maidens build an egg chamber and lavish the egg with jelly and food.

If the weather is right. Just a few days before the baby is born, the maidens will give a signal and more than ten thousand bees will leave the hive in less than 10 minutes- including the queen.

They will leave behind all the baby bees, honey and the new queen doesn’t leave. The bees in voyage will swam to a tree 100 yards away. A sound they make when they do this is a “song of increase”

In the tree, they cleave onto each other singing a song of safety geared towards avoiding the rain.

Lesson: Bees care about continuity hence leaving the original bee hive. You have to know when to leave but most importantly you have to realize that leaving is a sign of progress.

Adapted from Seth Godin