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Anyone is welcome to perform these songs in public without royalties; however, if any of them are recorded or published for profit, the writers/composers expect the usual royalties.

SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!

The Challenge:  This challenge was to write a song about a a report on National Public Radio that scientists in the US have made a fantastic advance in the study of honey bees -- they've caught several of the little buggers and glued diodes and antennae on their back with double-sided poster tape. "They look like hors d'oeuvres with glass toothpicks in them," said one of the researchers. Then the researchers release the honey bees and *attempt* to follow them in vans equipped with radio receivers; communicating with each other via walkie-talkies, evoking such conversations as: "He's going north." "Now he's going west." "He's going south -- nope, make that north again."

I Am a Little Honeybee by derrymacash
(To the tune of "The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes")

I am a little honeybee
None's ever had concerns with me
I lie low in the winter
And in summer reappear
The busiest of all the beasts
I toil all day and never cease
Until through human agency
I was forced to flee from here

It was on a pleasant afternoon
All in the merry month of June
I'd visited a buttercup
En route to a rose
When I was rudely intercepted
Hauled away and then subjected
To a physical enhancement
Whose purpose no-one knows

Arriving later at the hive
(Lucky to have fled alive)
My comrades gathered round me
And the muttering began
I was brought before the Queen
"Explain what this appendage means"
"I'm afraid your majesty
I don't believe I can"

Then up spake an elder bee
"I've seen this once before" said he
"It ended up in tragedy"
A silence then befell
"The humans use it and so they know
Everywhere we bees do go"
"Then we must strike a fatal blow"
The Queen did shrilly yell

I was sent out from the hive
For all the time that I'm alive
I may not revisit
I may not return
I must wander randomly
Hill and dale and street and lea
If ever they catch sight of me
My neighbours will me spurn

So off I buzzed, with heavy heart
My first stop was near Glendart
From there I flew to Carrigart
In the County of Armagh
From there to Belfast I did fly
The Glens of Antrim were nearby
A tail wind helped me then to fly
To the place they call Cultra

I led the men a merry chase
I stopped off at many the resting place
Dundalk, Navan, Drogheda, Naas
As south I made my way
Then westwards through Athlone I flew
Ballymote, then out by Tuam
Mayo, Connemara too
And over Galway Bay

From then I've travelled round non-stop
I'm buzzing all around the shop
It seems I've been flying
For all eternity
I've really fooled the scientists
Their previous theories they've dismissed
But on all my journeying I miss
My hive fraternity


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