Power
The speaker is aware that she holds power over her bees, and feels unsure how to handle this power. She vacillates between seeing it as a burden and a privilege. By comparing the bees to slaves, the speaker suggests that she feels guilty about her ability to control their movements and cause them harm. On the other hand, by comparing them to a mob, she indicates that her position of power actually makes her vulnerable, since the creatures she holds authority over can actually harm her if they choose to do so collectively. In the poem's last stanzas, the speaker riffs on the possible ways she might exercise her power, feeling both excited and scared. She realizes that she could return the bees, starve them, or free them. If she does free them, she has to make decisions about how to present herself, since she wants the bees to ignore her—even while suggesting that she might feel insecure or sad if they do. In the end, the speaker plans to relinquish control by setting the bees loose, and hopes that they will not harm her.
Femininity
The speaker is simultaneously aware of the power she holds over the bees and aware of the vulnerability, stress, and indeed powerlessness that can come from that power. One way to understand this paradox is by seeing the speaker's situation as a metaphor for femininity and womanhood. The speaker has a maternal role in relation to the bees, to an extent. Like a parent, she can decide what happens to them and how to care for them. But what this means is that she is burdened with feeding and caring for them. The speaker's relationship to the bees also bears some resemblance to sexual subjugation. She considers whether she might save herself by turning into a tree. This is a subtle allusion to the mythological figure Daphne, who transforms herself into a tree to escape a male pursuer. However, the speaker then notices that the trees around her are both poisonous and attractive, suggesting that mere transformation won't solve her problems. She realizes in the end that she must hide herself under a beekeeper's suit to avoid the bees' attention. In other words, the poem hints, love and admiration don't give women power. Instead, they make them vulnerable, and make it necessary to retreat and hide.
Imagination
One way to understand the bees is as a metaphor for the speaker's ideas and thoughts. When they are contained rather than expressed, the speaker cannot understand them, and feels threatened and distracted by them—just as the bees buzzing in the box are a loud, stressful mystery to her. But expressing the thoughts (releasing the bees, so to speak) is also frightening. Once the speaker's ideas are out in the world, they can cause her harm by inviting judgment or unwanted attention. Or they might be entirely ignored, which won't harm the speaker but may cause her to feel self-doubt. The speaker's decision to release the bees can be understood, in this metaphorical framework, as a decision to express her ideas, inviting unforeseen consequences but putting a stop to the stress of keeping them contained.
