The novel follows two days in the life of Captain Richard, an unemployed ex-cavalryman who feels lost in a world that has become more technologically advanced and impersonal.

Richard accepts a job interview at Zapparoni Works, a company that designs and manufactures robots including the titular glass bees.

Richard's first-person narrative blends depiction of his unusual job interview, autobiographical flashbacks from his childhood and his days as a soldier, and reflection on the themes of technology, war, historical change, and morality.

[1][2] American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling composed an introduction for the New York Review Books edition in 2000, saying that "its speculations on technology and industry are so prescient as to be uncanny.

"[3] Out-of-work former cavalryman and tank inspector Captain Richard is offered a job interview with a "catch" by a former comrade, Twinnings: namely, he suggests a morally questionable position with Giacomo Zapparoni, whose firm builds advanced robots; occasionally one of his engineers deserts, and he needs a man to "take care of" the problem to protect company secrets.

At this point a reluctant Richard offers the first of many essayistic narrative asides, as he outlines the social magnitude of Zapparoni's creations, and the first of many autobiographical flashbacks, recounting his days in Military Academy under the guidance of his strict yet caring instructor, Monteron.

[6] Richard's ruminations then turn inward, as he narrates his own lack of worldly success and his negative evaluations by superiors as an "outsider with defeatist inclinations.

The Glass Bees, like another of Jünger's novels, Heliopolis, thematizes the altered relationship between technology, society, and nature; set in a future world in which the distinction between war and peace has been largely effaced.

[25] For Richard, the extent of mechanization in the novel's world undermines the autonomy of the individual and threatens to place all social relations within an "instrumental order of identity" based upon "a hierarchy of efficiency.

[27] Scenes in The Glass Bees such as the discovery of the severed ears prompt reflection on the fragmenting effect of modern technologies, which serve to undermine nature, experience, and the human body as organic, meaningful integral totalities.

[33] In constructing small and intricate creations rather than titanic beings, Zapparoni acknowledges the fact that it is only through the subtle and seemingly insignificant that lives are influenced.

Kim Goudreau commented, "despite his visceral association with war and changing regimes, Jünger places little to no emphasis upon the institution of government.

"[34] It is not the world-shattering events, the wars, the societal decay, or the collapse of governments that Richard focuses on as his formative experiences, rather the small and overlooked moments: single nights and instants from military school and childhood.

Devin Fore has read the prevalence of the nanoscale in the novel as a prescient shift of emphasis from an anthropocentric mesoscale to the a-human, microscopic scale of the insect, constituting a meditation upon "the cultural and anthropological challenges that would attend this process of technical recalibration.

His first reaction to the job offer that starts off the plot is objection to its dubious moral standpoint - Zapparoni wants someone to do his dirty work for him in dealing with deserting engineers.

[41] Schwerbrock called the story "artificial," and Block claimed Jünger failed to portray technology realistically and relied too much on allegory.

[42] On a similar note, much like Neaman, he mentions that Jünger seems to be on a warmer level with the fact that the individual's necessary compliance with the new dehumanized worlds of technology.

[44] He praises Jünger's ability to cover many significant creative ideas of the past thirty years, "skillfully fashioned into a tight web of motive and symbol".

[47] In "Ethics, Automation, and the Ear", Kochhar-Lindgren sees Jünger's metaphysical conception of human existence as threatened by the impending domination of technology.