As Claire Preston beautifully puts it, ‘Our history of thinking about ourselves quivers with bees’ (Bee, Reaktion Books, 2019: 18)  Bees are a model species with which we have drawn analogies and comparisons with ourselves, resulting in many fables and allegories about human society, such as diligence and social organisation. It is thus wonderful that ‘Rethinking fables’ was able to feature two bee fables projects. Both caringly pay attention to bees themselves and the nature of our relationship with them. Carrie Dhoe’s ‘Letting Bees Tell their Stories’  was given at the ‘Global Fables’ workshop on September 13, 2024 and Laura del Vecchio presented her ‘Buzzing Against Collapse’ in Canterbury at our final conference on May 24, 2025.