The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Manai, Yamen. The Ardent Swarm. Amazon Crossing, 2021.

Yamen Manai's parabolic novel, The Ardent Swarm, is a third person narrative following the lives of the Nawa villagers in the wake of the Arab Spring. Though the narrative structure employs temporal inventiveness, the following summary follows a primarily linear progression.

As a young man in search of work, Sidi answered an ad for able-bodied male workers. He received a position as the beekeeper for a farm in the middle of the Arabian desert. During his employment, Sidi wondered why the court required so much honey. One day, when the court visited the farm, Sidi spied on the prince and his men. Through a slit in the tent, Sidi is horrified to witness naked women dancing in his honey. Disgusted by his leader's corruption and wastefulness, he fled the farm and moved to the outskirts of a secluded North African village called Nawa.

Over the years, Sidi grew comfortable in his new isolated reality. Though he sometimes visited the village center, he was comfortable in the company of his bees. He even began calling them his girls, devoting his life to their care. Then one day, Sidi woke to discover that thousands of his bees had been massacred by a mysterious predator. When he questioned the villagers, they had nothing to report.

In the days following, he studied the hives religiously, desperate to see if the predator might return. One afternoon, he sensed a change in his bees' demeanor. Shortly thereafter, a giant hornet-looking insect scouted the hives, spread its pheromones over the hives, and soon returned with 19 other hornets. Sidi watched, astounded, as the violent hornets again attacked his bees. Eventually he interrupted the attack, and captured one of the hornets. When he showed the captive bug to his community, one man named Douda said he had seen the creature before.

A few months prior, an electoral caravan visited Nawa. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, new parties were canvassing throughout the nation. When the Party of God caravan arrived in Nawa, they showered the villagers with astounding gifts in exchange for their political backing. The people unanimously voted them into power. However, while emptying his crates of goods, Douda found an odd cardboard mass inside. When he saw Sidi's hornet, he realized it was the same creature from the crate. He showed Sidi the nest. Sidi realized the hornets had arrived with the Party of God. Neither invader could be trusted.

Worried about his community, and desperate to save his bees from the hornets, Sidi grew restless. Then one night he had a dream that made him realize he must learn about the hornets in order to defeat them. He traveled to the capital city, and explained his problem to his niece, Jannet. Jannet led him to the local university where her husband Tahar worked. Together, the companions learned about the hornets, and how Japanese bees had learned to survive their attacks.

After Sidi left the capital, Jannet and Tahar traveled to Japan in search of queen breeders. A local farmer gifted the couple 20 Japanese queens to bring back to Sidi.

Meanwhile, Sidi ventured into the mountains in search of the hornets' nest. If he destroyed them, he might be able to protect his hives. On his way home with the giant hornet nest, he witnessed the Party of God warriors ambushing the patrol guards. He unleashed the lethal hornets on the men, halting their gross acts of violence.

Two years later, Sidi's bees were doing well. Though he did not know if the queen breeder would be able to forever save his hives from the hornets, he had learned to trust the laws of nature, and accept what he could not control.