Dearest Readers,
Are you buzzing with excitement over this issue? Can you not wait to read the honeyed words that our contributors have written? Ready to comb through and find the sweet nectar that resides within?
This issue we have queen bees, nurse bees, mason bees, Buddha bees, bees in fairy tales, bees in fall, bees in winter, beekeepers, and honey by the gallonful.
It has always been our pleasure to read all of the different submissions we receive. This issue was no different. However, we received so many great submissions we have put together our biggest issue yet. We feel like queen bees of the hive, with drones bringing offering after offering to feed our fat rumps so that we may continue to lay little bee eggs in the way of these journals.
So thank you, dear contributors. And thank you readers for picking up this issue, as heavy as it may be. And thank you bees! Bees do so many great things, it’s no wonder that they’re so busy all of the time. Without bees humankind would likely have starved. Go out there and plant some flowers so bees can keep being themselves and doing what they do. But first, help yourself to these poems and short stories.
After all of that, consider submitting to our 18th issue: Old Favorites, in which we are seeking pieces for any of our past 17 themes (including this one, if you feel so inspired after
reading these pieces).

We will bee with you always,
Deep Overstock Editors



Cover art: Spring Day by Unknown, 1900
Listen to the pieces: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6.


Ellen Austin-Li – Honeycomb Tattoo; Robber Bees; Nurses; Shadow Puppet; The Day My Husband Stood in the Spring Sun; Two Queens; Undertakers
Jan Ball – Ringling City, Where Bees Practice for the Circus
Maev Barba – The Chamber Bee
Tom Barlow – Tranquility
Stella Bauer – In The Care of Bees
Mackenzie Beninati & Nico Wilkinson – The Bees and the Beekeeper Speak
A.B. Cabdriver – The Hornets of White Mountain
Yuan Changming – Temporarily Floating
Jennifer Clark – Saint of beekeepers and beggars
Emmy Clarke – The Beekeeper
Ryan Clinesmith – Dusting; Sunday Baroque
Estée Arts Crenshaw – Megachilidae; Sorrow
John Davis – Buddha Bee; Final Time; Scissor Bee’s First Day
Mark DeCarteret – bees
“doug” – WANNABEE
Rob Duisberg – An Elegant Unfolding
Sara Eddy – Bee Yard; Moving the Hive; Fall Harvest
Lynette G. Esposito – Conversation Between the Beekeepers
Anna Laura Falvey – And the Bees
Stephanie Fluckey – Honey
Gabby Gilliam – Final Throes of Winter
Lydia Gwyn – We Watch and Wait
Heather Hambley – XOXO, Candyman: a Creative Latin Composition Inspired by Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden”
Brooke Hoppstock-Mattson – Consider the bees; Moonlit Holiday; This Is Just To Say To the Bees
Julie Jones – Melissa, Queen of Bees
Alshaad Kara – A day in the Orange valley; Bumblebee; Childhood; Honeysuckles; Multiverse; Queen bee; Source of life
Melissa Kerman – The Fly; The Queen Bee
Rae Lamicq – Keeping In The Time of Colony Collapse; Pomona & The Bees; The Beekeeper’s Tanging to a Potential Lover
Karla Linn Merrifield – Inexplicable
nat moon – Winter
Timothy Arliss OBrien – Save the Bees
Rebecca Patrascu – as a mason bee; Beekeeper-To-Be; Lessons from the Apiary; The Queen
Katherine D. Perry – Time to Swarm
Mary Salome – From the Impatient Beekeeper’s Notebook
Michael Santiago – House of Honey
Laura Scott – The Queen Bee, A Fairytale Adaptation
Bob Selcrosse – The Beekeeper’s Daughter
Jihye Shin – crescent dance
Lauren Swift – hum
Jonathan van Belle – The Honeyed Thyrsus
Lily Walsh and Josh – Return to Honey Castle
Nicholas Yandell – Of Restless Wonder



Editors-In-Chief: Mickey Collins & Robert Eversmann
Managing Editors: Michael Santiago & Z.B. Wagman
Poetry: Melissa Kerman & Jihye Shin
Prose: Michael Santiago & Z.B. Wagman