Although bees are poisonous, the speaker presents a maxim on how a functional society should interact with a swarm of them because he realizes his dependence for their pollinating skill. The speaker states that he needs the bees in order to survive by performing ritualistic gestures to have them intermingle within his society: “Throw gravel over them and say:…/ Never to the woodland wild may you fly!” The speaker suggests using gravel against the swarm because the bees will work together to build a new hive away from the “wild,” where it is dangerous, to live in a skep to fertilize his crops. In other words, this means that the ideal society will have to cooperate with the bees because their livelihood depends on it. However, the bees also
