🐝 Name the Bees: Part Three

Not all bees are assholes. Some bring snacks, vibes, and emotional defibrillation.

I always thought the hive in my head was full of chaos.

To be fair, most days it is. Between Kevin spiraling, Juice-box chasing dopamine, and Karen whispering unhelpful things about how I probably ruined everything already, it’s a lot.

But lately, something’s been shifting.

It happened quietly. No big breakthrough. No emotional montage. Just... small moments. Like when I opened my notes app ready to rant, but instead wrote, “It’s okay. You’re doing your best.” And I believed it. For like, eight seconds. But still. 🫶

That’s when I realized: not all bees are here to sabotage me.

Some of them actually help. Or at least don’t make it worse. They show up when I’m on the floor surrounded by cold tea, laundry I’ve folded three times, and a vague sense of shame I can’t quite name. They don’t yell. They don’t rush. They just sit with me. One of them even made me think about toast, which honestly felt like progress.

So today, we’re naming the other bees. The ones who stay calm when everything else is on fire. The ones who show up with snacks, or a blanket, or a weirdly specific reminder that you do in fact have value, even when your to-do list says otherwise.

Let’s meet them.

🐝 Crumb

Crumb, the soft snack bee. Doesn’t make you food. They’re the internal vibe that reminds you food is a thing you should probably do again. They show up when you’ve hit that particular flavor of burnout where you haven’t eaten all day, but somehow have managed to cry, scroll, and stare at the wall for 47 minutes thinking about taxes, dead pets, and whether everyone secretly hates you.

You don’t need a meal plan. You need a Crumb.

They arrive quietly, like a background character in your own breakdown. Not pushy. Not preachy. Just… there. Smelling faintly of toast and pity. They hand you a gentle thought like, “Hey… what if you just had a banana and stopped spiraling for five minutes?”

Crumb is not dramatic. Crumb is not motivational. Crumb is the part of your brain that suddenly gets just enough blood flow to go,
“Actually, I think I do need a snack before I email my manager about systemic failures in the …….. ”

They interrupt the chaos just long enough to let you function at a deeply mediocre level, and sometimes that’s all you need. Crumb gets you from feral goblin mode to semi-coherent goblin with a digestive biscuit in hand.

Before Crumb? You’re horizontal. Starving. Crying because your life is a mess but somehow also tweeting through it.

After Crumb? Still a mess, but now upright, slightly salty, and ready to respond to emails with only mild passive aggression.

Crumb keeps you alive. Crumb lowers the bar. Crumb believes in snacks and second chances.

Without them, you would absolutely perish in a duvet burrito of existential dread.

🐝 Lo-Fi

Lo-Fi, the emotional background bee. Doesn’t speak. They just hover quietly in the corner like a sentient lava lamp, playing imaginary chill beats to drown out your inner monologue. Their job? Prevent full psychological combustion by giving your brain the auditory equivalent of herbal tea and a long exhale.

They don’t fix anything. They don’t even care what’s wrong. They just gently mute the chaos, like a human volume knob for spirals.

Sticky Ricky’s throwing intrusive thoughts around like spaghetti at a wall, including that one about how you ruined your entire career with a typo in an email sign-off. (You meant “regards.” You hit T instead of G. You’ve never emotionally recovered.)

Lo-Fi turns her down to a soft whisper that sounds like she’s underwater and mildly drunk.
Sticky Ricky’s throwing intrusive thoughts around like spaghetti at a wall?
Lo-Fi drops a lo-fi remix over it called “Is This Thought Helpful? ft. No It Isn’t.”

They wear the same hoodie every day. No one knows if they own shoes. Their vibe is candle that smells like ‘Sad in Spring’ and they exclusively communicate through head nods and emotionally supportive eye contact from across the room.

Before Lo-Fi? You’re vibrating out of your skin, scrolling through eight apps at once, and about to emotionally combust because someone used a “😊” instead of “😂.”
After Lo-Fi? You’re still anxious, but now you’re lying on the floor under a weighted blanket whispering “vibe shift” to yourself like a spell.

Lo-Fi doesn’t ask questions. Lo-Fi just lowers the lights, hands you an imaginary warm drink, and sits beside you while the world stops spinning for a sec.

They're not your best friend. They're not even your favourite bee. But they're the reason you didn’t send a five-paragraph reply analyzing why they used a smiley face instead of the laughing one.

Lo-Fi is the chill between breakdowns.
And honestly? We owe them everything.

🐝 Sploot

Sploot, the emotional flat-line bee. Shows up when you’ve emotionally powered down. Not crying. Not functioning. Just lying on the floor like an unplugged appliance, staring at the carpet and wondering if it’s possible to quit being a person mid-week.

You don’t summon them. You just flop, and a few seconds later, there’s a soft thud beside you. Sploot has arrived.

They don’t speak. They don’t ask what’s wrong. They just lie next to you, face down, like a weighted blanket with unresolved trauma. They don’t move much either, except maybe to roll slightly closer or gently pass you a stale crisp from under their wing like it’s a peace offering.

The thing is, Sploot doesn’t try to help in the traditional sense. They don’t ask if you’ve tried journaling or deep breathing. They don’t mention the Let Them Theory or suggest you “release what no longer serves you.”

Sploot doesn’t believe in that stuff. They don’t quote the Let Them Theory. Because when your brain is screaming “DON’T LET THEM” and your nervous system is chewing its own foot, Sploot just flops next to you and vibes until things stop being unbearable.

Sploot believes in lying on the floor until the feeling passes or your legs go numb, whichever comes first.

I once said,

“I think I’m broken,” you whispered into the carpet.
Sploot didn’t move. “Cool. I’m a rug,” they said, face down.

Another time, they rolled onto their back and farted. Neither of you acknowledged it. That’s the kind of bond you have. 💨

They don’t fix anything. But they make the silence feel less like failure and more like a temporary ceasefire. And somehow, with Sploot there, you stop trying to force yourself to “get up and be productive” and start accepting that maybe lying here is the most productive thing you can do right now.

Eventually, you shift. You reach for your phone. You sit up a little. Not because Sploot told you to. But because they gave you space to stop fighting yourself.

They don’t motivate. They don’t inspire. They just match your energy until it softens.
It’s not healing. But it’s a start.

And sometimes, that’s more helpful than anything else.

🐝 Wheezy

Wheezy, the hysteria bee. Doesn’t arrive until you’ve fully snapped. Like, ugly crying in the bathroom while ordering a 10-piece nugget meal and sending a voice note that starts with, “I’m fine but also I’m not,” then laughing halfway through because it’s so tragic it’s funny now.

They’re not there to help. They’re there to lose it with you, in the best way possible.

Wheezy wheezes. That’s how you know they’ve landed. You’re mid-tears, mid-overwhelm, and suddenly you’re laughing. Not because things are better. Just because they’re so bad, so ridiculous, so out-of-hand that your brain gave up and said, “Yeah okay. Let’s laugh instead.”

That’s Wheezy’s whole thing.

They sometimes show up wearing sunglasses indoors and carrying a half-eaten flapjack they definitely stole. Their laugh sounds like a dying accordion mixed with a goose being emotionally exorcised. You once caught them giggling in the mirror after a breakdown because your mascara had melted into a shape that looked like a confused raccoon.

Wheezy doesn’t soothe.
They escalate.
They make everything feel 1% more unhinged, and 17% more survivable. Because once you're laughing, even if you're still crying, you’ve broken the tension.

You’ve remembered your body.
You’ve remembered absurdity.
And absurdity is one of the first steps back to hope.

Before Wheezy: full emotional collapse. Ugly crying, pacing in circles, questioning your entire existence, and dry-heaving over the idea that someone might be annoyed with you. You’re trying to text a friend for help but can’t decide if “hey” sounds too desperate, and you’re fully convinced your life is over because you said “you too” to a barista three days ago.

After Wheezy: still red-eyed, still chaotic, but now you’re laugh-crying, clutching a chicken nugget like a stress ball, and whispering “what is my actual life?” between gulps of fizzy drink and micro-breakthroughs, which, weirdly, feels kind of healing.

Wheezy isn’t wise.
Wheezy is the cracked-out emotional release valve who reminds you that sometimes, losing it is coping.
And it’s hilarious.

🐝 Flip

Flip, the perspective shift bee. Doesn’t arrive gently. Flip bursts in wearing sunglasses, radiating the unearned confidence of someone who just had a breakdown in a Tesco car park and immediately scheduled a photo-shoot.

They show up when you’re spiraling over what other people think. When you’re catastrophic that one awkward text, or convinced you’ve ruined everything forever because of a typo and a tone shift. Flip interrupts that noise by yelling something like,

“Did they die though?”
or
“You’re not dramatic, you’re just chronically underappreciated.”

Flip lives to flip the script.
They don’t gaslight you, they just tilt your head until you realize, oh wait… maybe things aren’t actually that bad. Maybe you’re doing okay. Maybe you’re allowed to get on with your life without an internal apology tour.

They’re not subtle. They’re not chill.
They once wore a crown made of receipts and declared, “This proves I am the queen of trying.”

Before Flip: you’re overthinking everything, rereading texts, and spiralling into self-blame over something you said in 2017.
After Flip: you’re strutting to the kitchen in your worst hoodie like it’s a power suit, grabbing cold pizza with purpose, and muttering, “Actually? I’m freaking incredible.”

Flip is the bee that reminds you:

• Not everyone’s opinion matters.

• Not every mistake is the end of your story.

• And no one else is thinking about you as much as you are.

They help you zoom out. Snap out of it.
And maybe even laugh while you do.

Some bees make a mess.

These ones help clean it up in their own strange little ways.

They don’t fix your life. They don’t erase the chaos. But they make it easier to bear. Crumb reminds you to eat. Lo-Fi keeps the panic from peaking. Sploot lies down beside you when standing up feels impossible. Wheezy turns your breakdown into a badly timed giggle. And Flip? Flip rolls in like your personal hype squad with sunglasses and a mild disregard for social consequences.

Together, they don’t make things perfect.
They just make things possible. 🫶

Not all healing looks like deep work and inner child diagrams.
Sometimes it looks like a bee handing you a biscuit, playing sad beats in the background, lying face-down on the carpet, fart-laughing, and yelling “you’re doing great, babe” with a suitcase full of fake confidence.
And the thing is? It’s not just you….

Everyone’s got bees. 🐝

Even the ones who look put-together. Even your manager. Even that mum in Aldi yelling “put the prawn ring down.”
Some people are parenting with bees. Dating with bees. Working three jobs while their bees shout things like “you’re failing everyone.”
You can’t always see it, but we’re all quietly negotiating with our own hive while trying to make pasta and answer emails.

So if you’ve made it this far?
That’s not nothing. That’s resilience, baby!!
Go eat a biscuit. The bees are proud of you.

🐝💛🐝

If you laughed, felt seen, or briefly considered eating a sandwich after reading this,
the bees thank you.

They don’t want applause. They don’t want fame.
They just want… honey. Maybe a biscuit. Possibly a therapy voucher.

If you’d like to keep them buzzing (and help me keep writing strange, emotionally accurate nonsense like this), you can:

Thanks for reading, for laughing, and for recognizing that sometimes your most powerful move is collapsing mid-crisis while a bee in sunglasses tells you you’re doing amazing.