Lessons start on the speakers. Urbs don’t like that we farm kids are too busy to get educated, so lessons get played over the speakers while we work.

Today’s lesson’s just for us. It’s about the history of the bees. Not us. The real ones they used to have thirty years ago before the famines.

I think they looked like pests. Not the kids who kill pests but the actual bugs. They flew on little wings like some pests from flower to flower to collect nectar to make something sweet like sugar to share with people. ‘Honey,’ the speaker says over and over, like honey was the whole point of bees, not this job I’m doing now. I don’t know what honey tastes like. Gramps knows. He says, ‘Sweet like honey,’ sometimes. When the real bees flew from flower to flower, they did this job. One tiny bee could do the work of twenty kid bees every day. And the speaker says there used to be millions of them.

I think all the bees went away coz they looked small like pests. Before the famine, farmers didn’t have enough farm kids to catch the pests so they sprayed poison on the pests, but the poison didn’t know which was bees and which was pests.

Scientists still have some of the little bees and they say one day they’ll bring them back to work on the farms.

I don’t want the bees to come back. I want to be a bee. Coz Mags and me is farm kids, and we can stay in our shed with Gramps and we get food enough for all of us even though Gramps can’t work much no more, except for packing time. Everyone works like a dog at packing time. Little or old, there’s so many jobs, everyone works.

Before the famine, Ma was little and lived with Gramps in the city with the Urbs. Life was bad, there was no food, and no shed to live in. When the farms came to the city and asked them if they wanted to work just for food and a place to build their shed, they came on the buses with the other people who were tired of living in the streets, and being hungry, and being attacked while they slept.

Ma works back in the city now, coz she says if we don’t make some cold hard cash we’ll be living in a shed forever. But I like our shed. I like the trees. I like our chooks. If I get chosen to be a bee today everything will be super-cherries.

I jump down and run to the next tree. Pomz is just ahead of me. She looks over her shoulder and scowls a face like a dried apricot that I’m catching her.

There’s five trees each in our rows, and when I get to my last tree, there’s not enough stamen powder in my pouch to cover the feathers properly. I can pretend, but it’s important to get powder on every flower, that I know for sure. If the last tree in my row has no fruit in a few weeks’ time, Foreman will be telling me all about it and asking for my bee vest back.

I run two rows down where AJ’s in his fourth tree. ‘I’m out and I’ve got one more tree!’ I tell him, holding up my pouch. He holds out his and lets me dip. He’s a good friend.

‘Go! Go!’ I tell him and he goes back to work.

Pomz is already in her fifth tree. Foreman’s watching us both. We’re the leaders. He seen me reload from AJ’s pouch. He’ll guess I spilled.

I scramble into the tree and get to work, touching each of the flowers gently.

I jump down just after Pomz and we race to Foreman. We arrive together coz I’m faster at running.

Foreman nods and puts Pomz first in line and me behind. That don’t mean nothing, I tell myself.

AJ races the girl from row three and beats her to stand in line behind me.

Being first or second doesn’t mean you’re instant bee. Foreman has to like your style. You have to be gentle to the flowers and branches and not clumsy. With four of us done, Foreman blows his whistle and the other pests run up from their rows to hear who has won. It was one of us four. AJ pats my back. He thinks it’s me. I hope it’s him as well, not Pomz, coz she’s too heavy and mean.

Foreman gets out two new black-and-yellow stripe vests. ‘The new bees are…’ He stops and looks at us all. Me especially. I think my heart is gonna slide out my mouth. ‘Pomegranate and Applejoy.’

I turn around and give AJ a quick hug. I don’t let him see my face. ‘Yay, Aaj,’ I say but my voice is croaky. I run.