As was true with Ariel, the same is true for Plath's poem "Wintering", it can be read two ways. It can be read figuratively as well as literally. Literally it is about bees. About the winter when times are the hardest for them. About how they need food and that it would be detrimental to their lives if the beekeeper takes too much honey away from them at this critical time. But all these things can also mean something entirely different and Plath was simply playing upon this picture of wintering bees. This honey that she has could also be her poetry that she is creating or that is being created by her mind. It is unclear sometimes when she writes of her poetry as to who is actually doing the creating. Like in the fourth stanza she says "It is they who own me." It reminds me of what she says in Ariel, that "Something else/Hauls me through the air." These two lines from these poems make it seem like she is being controlled by some outside force that she very may well see as coming from with in her mind.
In the first stanza she uses the word "midwife" who is someone who would help deliver the baby. Here it seems to be someone who helps deliver or harvest the honey OR harvest the poetry that she has stored up with in her and she describes it as "cat's eye". The highest grade of a cat's eye stone is said to have the color of milk and honey which is what Plath classifies her store of honey or poetry. In the sixth stanza she says "To make up for the honey I've taken" the bees are filing up to fill up the syrup tin. I read on a bee website that at this time of the year (winter) the bees are in most danger, especially if their keepers take too much honey from them. In Plath's poem she could be alluding to the idea here that if she harvests too much from her self she will be in danger. The weeks prior to her death are then quickly remembered as a time where she seemed to be the most productive writing so many poems in so little time. Maybe she simply sucked herself dry? Like the bees there was nothing left to live off of after all their stores were taken.
