Bracket’s Two Flags

Bracket never gives one number. If you ask her how far it is to the pond, she says, “Between two hundred and three hundred wingbeats.” If you ask how many eggs the queen laid today, she says, “More than eight hundred, fewer than twelve hundred.” Some bees think she’s being difficult.

“Just say a number!” Copycomb told her once. “Any number!”

“Any number would be a lie,” Bracket said. “I don’t know the exact number. I know where it probably is.”

The trouble came in late summer, when a storm knocked a branch across the path to the linden tree. The scouts had to find a new way round, and the hive had to decide something important: was the new route short enough to fly with full loads before dark?

Comb asked the scouts how long the new route was.

“Six hundred wingbeats,” said one scout, very confidently.

“About six hundred,” said another.

Then Comb looked at Bracket, who had flown it twice that morning.

Bracket’s antennae twitched. She could feel everyone looking at her, waiting for one neat number. Her chest felt fizzy. It would be so much easier to say “six hundred” like the others and be done.

But she had flown it twice. The first time, with a tailwind, it took five hundred wingbeats. The second time, into the wind, it took nearly nine hundred.

She picked up two little flags the nursery bees used for marking cells, one in each front leg, and held them apart.

“Between five hundred and nine hundred,” she said. “It depends on the wind.”

A few bees groaned. “That’s a huge gap!”

“Yes,” said Bracket. “Because the wind makes a huge difference. If I just said six hundred, you’d think it was always short.”

Comb was quiet for a moment. “And the last flight home is at sunset, when the evening wind blows against us.”

“Then plan for the high end,” said Bracket. “Nine hundred.”

The hive decided that bees with full loads would leave the linden tree earlier, while there was still plenty of light, in case the wind was against them.

Three days later, a strong evening wind blew straight down the new route. The bees flew home slowly, beating hard. It took them almost nine hundred wingbeats. Every single one made it back before dark.

That night the scout who’d said “six hundred” landed beside Bracket.

“If we’d planned for six hundred,” she said, “some of us would have been out in the dark.”

Bracket fiddled with her flags. “Six hundred wasn’t wrong. On a calm day it’s right. It just wasn’t the whole story.”

Copycomb hovered nearby. “So a range isn’t you being difficult.”

“A range is me being honest,” said Bracket. “The low end says what’s likely if things go well. The high end says what might happen if they don’t. The gap between them tells you how sure I am.”

She stuck the two flags into the wax beside her cell, a little way apart. Not one number. Two. And everything that could happen in between.