the margin bee does not pollinate flowers and barely tolerates other bees. it builds its small thirteen-celled comb in the right-hand margin of a book, between the last word of the line and the paper's edge. each cell holds one annotation.
a reader's pencil disturbs them. they prefer ink, and prefer it dried. a marginal note that survives three re-readings has, by convention, been approved by the colony. one that vanishes overnight has been removed by them as inaccurate.
their work is sometimes confused with that of the marginalia proper, or with the elder paginate moth; but neither, on close inspection, files notes with so much honey.
— pencilled a query in the margin. by the next chapter, the bees had answered. — r.t.