Speaker
The speaker of this poem is defined by indecisiveness and an uneasy relationship to her own power and ability. She seems, on the one hand, to desire power, and control. After all, she orders the bees, examines the box, and eventually resolves to free them in a kind of exercise of benevolent authority. On the one hand, she evidently feels overwhelmed and distressed by the knowledge that she could kill, release, or keep the bees. She also simultaneously desires their recognition and hopes to fly under the radar, knowing that the bees' attention could be dangerous. Her outlook is constantly in flux, moving from exhilaration to fear and back again quickly.
The Bees
The bees in the box function as a single character. As the speaker notes, while they may not be threatening individually, it is their sheer collective power and noisiness that makes them intimidating. Their motives seem obscure to the speaker at first. She isn't sure what their buzzing means, and can't decide whether they'll cause her harm, like her, or ignore her. In the end, the speaker concludes, the bees probably don't care about her as long as she doesn't harm them. She concludes that they probably just want to make honey and, perhaps, be set free from their box.
