The narrator, Lily, makes an allusion about bees in CHAPTER 1 of The Secret Life of Bees. What does she allude to and why?

Each chapter of The Secret Life of
Bees begins with an epigram from a text about bees.  Before chapter 1, it
reads:

The
queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the
hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they
show unmistakable signs of queenlessness. –Man and
Insects

This is
allusion, of course, to Lilly's mom's death.  In chapter 1 we learn how Lily shot her
mother when she was four and, since then, has lived a "queenless" childhood, with no
"unifying force" or feminine community.

As a "worker,"
Lilly has sensed her absence, going out to the peach orchard often to sift through her
old shoebox full of memories.  Since T. Ray gives not sense of direction in her life,
the entire book serves as Lily's desire to find a surrogate mother.  At the Boatright
house, she finds three and the secret to her mother's past.