The Divine Comedy: Week 44, The Rose and the Bees

Beatrice leads the Pilgrim upward through the heavenly spheres, eventually reaching the ninth and final heaven, the Primum Mobile. The Primum Mobile is the abode of the angels, and as the highest heaven is the sphere moved directly by God. Dante sees the angels as nine concentric rings of fire, each giving off sparks.

Above the Primum Mobile, Beatrice brings the Pilgrim into the Empyrean, the abode of God, above and beyond all physical heavens.

And there, in the Empyrean, the Pilgrim beholds the Elect, all the souls of the faithful. The elect are seated in light in the shape of a rose. Above the rose is God, and between God and the rose are angels, pollinating the rose, like bees, with God's peace and love:

So now, appearing to me in the form
of a white rose was Heaven's sacred host,
those whom with His own blood Christ made his bride,

while the other host [the angels]--that soaring see and sing
the glory of the One who stirs their love,
the goodness which made them great as they are,

like bees that in a single motion swarm
and dip into the flowers, then return
to heaven's hive where their toil turns to joy--

descended all at once on that great bloom
of precious petals, and then flew back up
to where its source of love forever dwells.

Their faces showed the flow of living flame,
their wings of gold, and all the rest of them
whiter than any snow that falls to earth.

As they entered the flower, tier to tier,
each spread the peace and ardor of the love
they gathered with their wings in flight to Him. 

People ponder a lot about what heaven is going to be like. Dante's vision is that heaven is like a flower, pollinated eternally by angels with peace and love.