NUOVA

or THE NEW BEE

A Story for Children
of Five to Fifty by

VERNON KELLOGG

With Songs by
CHARLOTTE KELLOGG

Illustrated by
Milo Winter

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY VERNON KELLOGG AND
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO
JEAN
WHO IS FIVE

"Nuova, I love you"

PREFATORY NOTE

Most of this that I have written about bees is true: what is not, does not pretend to be. Some of the true part sounds almost like a description of what human life might in some respects be, if certain social movements of to-day were followed out to their logical extreme. I suppose that in this likeness lies the moral of the book.

V. K.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE NAMES OF THE BEES

As all the bees of this story are Italian bees, they all, except one, have Italian names. And they should really be spoken as the Italians speak them. Besides, they are prettier that way. Therefore, a list of them, with the proper way to pronounce them, is given here.

Nuova (noo-o'va)
Uno (oo'no)
Due (doo'ay)
Tre (tray)
Saggia (saj'jia)
Mela (may'la)
Cera (chay'ra)
Fessa (fess'sa)
Aria (ah'ri-a)
Principessa (prin-chee-pess'sa)
Lotta (lawt'ta)

NUOVA

CHAPTER I

Nuova Appears

Nuova seemed to be gradually awakening. It would have seemed that way to any one who could have seen her just at this moment, and it seemed that way to Nuova herself. It was just as if one were in a comfortable, warm bed, and began to be conscious of a faint light outside and of soft voices and of other subdued sounds. The light and sounds grow stronger and louder, until, with a start, one is really awake, and sees that the light is the sunlight of a beautiful morning coming in at the curtained window, and recognizes the sounds to be those of the household already busy with a new day's work.

It was, indeed, an awakening for Nuova; but it was more. It was the beginning of a new life for her. Until now she had been in a sort of pollywog stage for a bee—a stage in which she had no legs nor wings, and in which she could do nothing for herself at all, not even as much as a pollywog can—and had lain all the time in a long, narrow, six-walled, waxen cell that was bed and room all in one. That is, we might say, she had always so far in her life been in bed.

For when she was born in her cell, she was just a tiny white thing, without wings or legs, blind, and quite helpless. Really about all she could do was to squirm a little in her horizontal cell, and keep opening her mouth when she was hungry to let somebody know she must be fed. She was immediately taken care of, however, by the nurse bees who kept near the nursery cells all the time except when they had to go to the pantry cells for more food for the babies. This food was flower nectar and pollen that had been brought into the hive by the active forager bees and stored in the pantry cells. The nurses made a sort of very good and nutritious jelly out of it which made Nuova grow very fast.

After she had been fed in this way for five days, she was many times larger than she had been at first. At the end of this time, however, the nurse bees did what might seem, at first thought, a rather heartless thing. They made a thin cap or cover of wax over the open mouth of Nuova's cell, thus shutting her up tight in her bedroom. She was so large that she almost filled her cell, but there was still a little room left, and this the nurses filled, just before putting the waxen cap on the cell, with pollen and nectar mixed. For a few days Nuova lay quietly in her dark, sealed-up cell, eating, when hungry, from the lump of pollen and nectar which lay by her side. And then she stopped eating and simply lay there in a sort of trance for several days more.

To Nuova herself all her life in the cell, from first day to last, must have seemed little more than a sort of dream; a confused dream of not being able to walk or fly, or see or hear, but only to squirm a little, and be hungry and then be fed, and to feel dimly strange growing pains from the rapidly growing legs and wings when they began to come, and of always being rather comfortably warm and sleepy.

But this sleeping time had come to an end now; this helpless pollywog stage was finished for Nuova. And the light she saw through the big eyes that had grown out on her head, during the last few days in the shut-up cell, was the faint but real light of a new day filtering its way through the crowded hive. And the sounds she heard by means of the many tiny little hearing organs on the long, delicate, sensitive feelers, or antennæ, that had also grown out near her eyes and were connected by fine nerves with her brain, were the humming and murmuring of the thousands of industrious bees of the hive who were already at work at their various duties all around her.

Nuova's awaking, then, was much more than the mere waking-up after a night's sleeping. It was the waking from a life of doing nothing but lying in bed and sleeping and eating and growing, to a life of taking care of one's self and helping to take care of others; it was the waking from a baby life to real bee life. For Nuova was now a full-grown bee, with all the wonderful body and all the wonderful instincts and the high intelligence that we know bees to have. But she was still shut up in her nursery cell.

The beginning of a new life for Nuova

However, to escape from it was not difficult. She could see that the faint light came in strongest through the capped end of the cell. The waxen cap was the thinnest part of the walls of her room, and as Nuova's head was already lying close to the cap, it was a simple and easy matter for her to begin biting it away with her two strong, little, trowel-like teeth. In a few moments she had made a little hole in the cap, and the light and sounds came in suddenly much brighter and louder than before, although the light was really not bright at all nor the sounds loud, as we reckon such things. For the inside of a honeybee's house, the hive, is always pretty dark, and the sounds the bees make are not all loud, except occasionally when things are especially exciting and all the bees are buzzing together at once, or when a princess is about to come from her nursery cell and both she and the old queen do a lot of extraordinary trumpeting.

But to Nuova, biting her way out through the thin wax cap of her cell, having never heard nor seen anything at all through all of her baby life, things seemed very bright and noisy indeed. This, however, instead of frightening her, made her only the more anxious to get out and be a part of this exciting world around her, and so she worked away as fast as she could, until suddenly the hole was large enough for her to crawl out. This she did, feeling, we may imagine, rather strange at using her new legs for the first time, and finding her new wings all folded up and rather damp and heavy. But out she came and, with a long breath or two, she started to walk over the uneven surface of the waxen comb in which her nursery cell was situated. But after only a few steps she felt tired and limp. Indeed she was limp, for all the outer part of her body, that was later to be firm and strong, was still rather soft and damp and weak; her legs could not hold her up well yet, and her unexercised muscles needed a little practice to work together just right. So she soon stopped, trembling all over from her unwonted exertion, and let her big eyes gradually take in the strange sight about her.

CHAPTER II

Nuova's First Experiences

It was truly a remarkable sight. She found that she was part way up a vertical wall or comb of waxen cells, each of six sides and all lying horizontally in the wall. This wall of cells towered far above her even to the very roof of the hive, and below her it stretched away down to the floor. Facing it towered another similar wall of cells, and there was but little more space between the two than was needed for the free movement of the scores, aye, even hundreds of bees that were clambering about over the opposite faces of the walls.

In each wall some of the cells were open and some capped over. In the open ones were either baby bees lying on their stomachs with their heads near the opening of the cells, and their mouths opening and shutting in a most comical way, or there was some pollen or honey; or there was nothing at all. The cells with babies in them were those in the middle part of the wall, while around these were the food cells. Near the open nursery cells were many capped ones, and Nuova saw that some of these caps were being gnawed through from the inside. She knew what that meant; she had just been doing that herself. But also near the open and half-filled pollen and honey cells were other capped ones, and Nuova guessed, and quite rightly, that these were filled and sealed-up honey cells. The open pollen cells were pretty to look at because the pollen in them was of different colors, yellow, orange, red, etc., and they made a sort of uneven but attractive color-pattern on the face of the great vertical wall.

Nuova was a little dizzy at first, with looking up and down the towering wall, and she had to hang on tightly to keep from falling. But she soon grew accustomed to the great heights above and below her, and even began to feel quite at home in her peculiar situation. A pang of hunger came to her as she saw a bee walk up to an open honey cell and take a long drink. She started to walk toward the same cell, when she felt a tug at one of her wings, and heard an impatient voice, evidently addressing her.

"Here, wait a minute; we haven't got you clean yet; and your wings aren't half dry. Don't be in a hurry!"

Nuova was startled; remember, it was the first bee-talking, or any kind of talking, she had ever heard. Yet she understood it perfectly, and understood at once, too, just what was going on. For as she turned her head to see who was speaking, she saw that two nurse bees were most industriously cleaning her body all over, and unfolding and smoothing out her wings, so that they would dry rapidly, and dry all properly spread out. Sometimes young bees do not get their wings properly spread before they dry, and then their wings are crumpled up and useless all through their lives.

Nuova had, indeed, for some time rather vaguely felt this gentle cleaning and wing-spreading operation going on, but at first she had felt so dizzy and faint, and then when she felt better had become so intent on looking up and down the two great walls of wax, with their various cells and the many active bees moving about over them, that she had paid no attention to the gentle rubbing and pulling and stretching. Indeed, it was done so gently that unless she had started to walk away, or had accidentally looked around, she might not have known that it was going on at all. It was a performance much like that a just-born kitten goes through at the hands, or rather tongue, of its mother. The pollen and honey, put into her cell when it was capped, had, of course, rather soiled Nuova's body and much of her hair was stuck together by it. So like every young bee, just come from its nursery cell, she needed a good cleaning. And she was getting it.

Without thinking twice about it Nuova did a very surprising thing. Or rather it was not surprising for a bee to do, but it would have been if one of us, just born, as it were, and without any teaching or practice or chance of hearing any one else first, should do it. For we always call surprising, in bees or other creatures, what would be surprising in us, which is a rather silly way of judging things, but one we are all very much given to. As we think we are the most important kind of creatures on earth—as certainly we are, to ourselves—we think our ways of doing things are the usual or normal or even best ways, and all other ways "surprising." But we shall find, the more we learn about Nuova, that bees have their own manner of life and ways of doing things, and one of the most important many differences between their ways and our ways is that they know so many things right off without any learning or practice or imitating of others. They are born knowing how; they do not have to be taught.

For example, the surprising thing that Nuova did right away, without thinking twice about it, was to begin talking to the two nurse bees who were cleaning her. What Nuova said, and what was said to her in return, is of no particular interest to us. It was simply commonplace talk, for Nuova's coming out of her cell, her first dizziness, the high walls of cells, the many bees moving about, the spreading-out of Nuova's wings and cleaning her body, and even Nuova's ability to understand things about her and to begin talking right away—all these were taken for granted in the hive as the most usual things in the world, which therefore needed no special exclaiming or talking about. In fact Nuova felt already that, as soon as she was properly clean and dry, she must join the other active bees, who were all busy with the different kinds of work they were doing, and begin work herself. And she felt that she knew just what this first work for her should be. It should be the work of a nurse. And the nurse bees cleaning her seemed to take this for granted too. For one of them soon said:

"I think you had better begin on the other side of the comb; there are enough of us on this side already."

Nuova looked up and down the great comb and then to right and left. The nurse noted this, and added:

"You can get around by going either to the top or the bottom, or to either end."

Nuova thanked her, and decided to crawl down to the bottom, for she could see, far down there, a number of bees moving about industriously cleaning the floor and some others that stood still, apparently on their heads, and kept their wings buzzing like mad. She was not quite sure what this performance meant; and the floor-cleaning, too, seemed a little curious. The fact is that, although bees do seem to know right off about things, they know these things one at a time, as it were; that is, when it is time for them to do a thing, they know pretty well, without any telling, how to do it, but they do not seem to know about other things at the same time. They seem to know things only as the time comes for each special thing to be done. Nuova seemed to know that she should begin working as a nurse, and to know how to do the work, for as soon as she started she did just about as well as any of the nurses, but floor-cleaning, and standing on one's head and fanning one's wings like mad, were not things she knew about yet.

Industriously cleaning the floor

She worked her way carefully down to the bottom of the comb and found herself in a very busy place indeed. There was a free place under this comb and under the one opposite to it as well. When she looked under the comb which she had just walked down, she saw a great, low-ceilinged place stretching away in all directions, rather dim and getting darker the farther away it extended, except in one direction. In this direction, however, it was lighter, and the farther the distance the lighter it was. From this lightest part many bees were hurrying toward her with great loads of vari-colored pollen in their pollen baskets, or with their honey sacs filled to overflowing with fresh nectar. They hurried on, paying no attention to any one, and disappeared one by one by climbing up and out of sight, except the few that climbed up the face of either of the combs that towered just over her. These bees she could still watch, and she could see that they carried their loads far up to the open food cells into which they emptied the food they had brought. Also she saw other bees, without loads, hurrying along the floor toward the light, and she had a wonderful thrill as she saw them, and something within her urged her to run with them toward the distant light; something inside her that sang of sunshine, blue sky, green grass and bushes, and many-hued fragrant flowers. But something else, even stronger, within her, told her not to go; that her work awaited her close at hand; that she must nurse bee-babies here in the dimly lighted hive.

So she turned away from the alluring light with only a glance at the floor-cleaners and the silly bees on their heads with their wings going like mad. So strong within her had grown the feeling that there was just one thing for her now, that she walked under the broad, lower edge of the comb from whose high wall she had descended and came into the bottom of another high space between two other towering walls of waxen cells.

CHAPTER III

Nuova as Nurse

When Nuova had come into this new high space, she looked up and realized that one of its side walls was simply the other side of the comb in which her nursery cell had been, while the other was that of another comb opposite it, just as she had seen that there was another comb opposite its other side. Nuova, seeing this, easily understood that probably this was the arrangement all through the hive, and that the broad and long, low, free space running through the whole hive just above the floor was a space just underneath the lower edges of many great vertical combs standing side by side. Which, of course, was true.

Right away, however, Nuova saw that one of the walls above her was incomplete; it did not reach, along its whole length, from the ceiling clear to the floor, but at one end, the end toward the lighter end of the hive, it came down but a little way from the ceiling. Clinging to this unfinished part of the wall was a great mass of bees, the upper ones hanging to the free edge of the wall, but the ones below clinging to them and to each other, thus forming a festoon or curtain of bees hanging down from the lower edge of the incomplete wall. Many bees in this living curtain were buzzing their wings violently, while others were quiet, with thin sheets or plates of some shining, silver-yellowish substance forming on the under side of their bodies.

Beneath the lower edge of the bee-curtain there was a broad, free space beyond which the vertical wall of another more distant comb appeared. On the floor in this open space were gathered many bees, most of which appeared to be picking up little pieces of the shining, silver-yellowish substance that had broken off from the bees in the festoon above, and fallen to the floor.

As this open space was lighter than the space she had come from, Nuova could see everything quite clearly here, and the activity of all the bees and their concentration on whatever they were doing impressed her very much. No one so much as spoke to her; no one spoke to any one else; but every one worked away for dear life. It made her feel that she must get at her own work just as soon as possible.

She glanced up the part of the wall that was all finished, and saw toward its middle a group of nurse bees, and a lot of open and capped nursery cells. She could even see, sticking out of some of the open ones, the comical heads of the babies, each with its mouth regularly opening and shutting. And then she heard a song, a gentle lullaby sort of song. It was the nurse bees singing as they worked. This is the song they sang:

We watch beside the cradles
When the bee-babies sleep;
We guard the shining pantries
Where the bee-milk we keep.

And when the countless tiny
Bee-mouths open wide,
We rush with drink and bee-bread
And drop them inside.

Our bread's the daintiest morsel
A wee babe could eat;
We knead it of soft pollen
And flower nectar sweet.

When ends our busy bee-day
The nurseries we right,
Then wash our countless bee-mites
And tuck them in tight.

Just try to feed our family,
And swiftly you'll see
That never were there nurses
So busy as we.

So she started to climb up to them. Just as she had gone a little way up, however, her attention was called to a very active and apparently excited group of bees crowding about a very different sort of cell from the ones that made up all the rest of the comb. This was five or six times as large as any of the others, and not six-sided, but shaped something like a pear with its small end down. It did not lie horizontal in the comb, but vertical, or nearly so, and had a rough, thick wall, and was open at its smaller, lower end. Nuova could not see what was in it, for she was already as high or higher than it was, as it was near the lower edge of the comb, its lower end, indeed, being but a little way above the floor.

As she hesitated a moment, attracted by the sight of the strange cell and the many excited bees about it, most of whom were nurses, she heard a bee, hurrying away from the cell, say to another hurrying toward it:

"How fast the princess is growing!"

This did not enlighten Nuova much, but the feeling inside of her was now so strong that she must begin work at once that she hurried on up to the nursery cells lying a little way above the curious large cell without trying to find out anything about it. Which shows again, of course, how different bees are from us.

When Nuova got to the nursery cells with their hungry babies she went right to work. She seemed to know just what to do; to go to the pollen and honey cells and drink honey and eat pollen and swallow them, but not too far, and then wait a few minutes, and then give this food up again, all properly mixed, through her mouth right into the open mouths of the hungry babies. And she knew just what babies were ready to have their cells capped with wax—with a nice little lump of food stored inside first, of course—and how to call some bee with a pellet of wax in its mouth to do the capping. She understood at once that the shining, silver-yellowish plates on the bodies of the bees in the festoon at the end of the comb were wax, and that the pieces being picked up by other bees from the floor underneath the festoon were to be used for capping cells, and for making new cells where the vertical wall of comb was still incomplete.

All these things, and whatever other new ones came up in the next few days in connection with taking care of the babies, she seemed to understand right away, and indeed she seemed to know how to do all her work without having to reason about it, or to observe and draw conclusions; in fact, without even once really having to think about it at all. And because it was all so simple, and so easy to understand, an extraordinary thing came to pass with Nuova; that is, an extraordinary thing for a bee. The thing was that Nuova got tired of her work!

Yes, she got tired of it; tired physically, which is not perhaps so extraordinary, for bees sometimes fall dead from being over-tired physically; but she also got tired and impatient of the simplicity and monotony of what she was doing. She got, I suppose we may fairly say, mentally and spiritually tired of it. Which happening marks Nuova as a bee of a strange and rare kind: a bee that is—is—well, all I can say is, a bee that is different. Other bees, if they had known of it, would have called her a "funny" bee, or a "peculiar" bee; or perhaps something worse. Indeed, this something worse is just what she was soon called. For Nuova, after a few days of this steady care of babies, one hot afternoon—the hive was so set in the garden that it was quite exposed to the sun—Nuova, I say, one hot afternoon stopped working, and crawled slowly down past the great pear-shaped cell clear to the lower edge of the comb and there she sat and simply did nothing!

Pretty soon Uno, one of the nurse bees in Nuova's group, who had already shown herself to have a rather spiteful nature, noticed that Nuova was not working, was not, indeed, to be seen anywhere about the nurse cells. So she touched another nurse bee near her, named Due, with her antennæ so as to call her attention, and said in a low voice: "Where is Nuova?"

Due looked around, and not seeing Nuova, said: "Why, where is she?" Then both bees touched a third nurse bee, named Tre, with their antennæ. She turned around and joined them.

"What's the matter?" she said. Then looking at the group of nurses, she added: "Where is Nuova?"

"That's it," said Uno and Due together. "Where is Nuova? She isn't here—she has stopped working."

"Exactly," said Tre. "I thought she would come to that—I've been noticing her lately. She doesn't seem to like to work."

"Whoever heard of such a bee!" exclaimed Uno and Due together.

"Let us find her," said Tre.

So all three started to move around over the comb looking for Nuova. They made wider and wider journeys from the nursery cells, until Uno, who had got down almost to the very bottom of the comb and was quite close to Nuova but had not yet seen her, heard a low voice murmuring, "I am so tired."

Uno turned quickly and saw Nuova. She was sitting with her head hanging down on her breast, and she looked very tired and dejected. But that aroused no sympathy in Uno, who, together with Due and Tre, had taken a strong dislike to Nuova, feeling in her, some way, a rather different, even a rather superior sort of bee. Nuova was so unusually pretty, for one thing. And she had such a lively interest in everything around her. Uno, Due, and Tre, who were bees almost exactly like each other, and like most other bees, felt an instinctive malice toward her, probably based on a certain envy which they did not, however, even admit to themselves.

Uno quickly called Due and Tre, and the three stared malevolently at Nuova for a moment and then said together, speaking loudly so that the other bees near by could hear: "Well, what a bee! To stop work! Just think of it!"

Then Uno leaned over her and called to her: "Lazy!"

And Due stepped up to her and said: "Loafer!"

And Tre came up on the other side of her and hissed: "Shirk!"

Then all three, lifting their wings to strike poor Nuova, who had sat very still through all this, shrinking from the vicious bees, called out: "We'll teach her!" And then they began to strike her all over with their strong wings.

It was going pretty badly with Nuova, when an old floor-cleaner named Saggia stepping up to the group shouldered off the three angry nurse bees. Saggia had noticed at other times that Nuova went rather slowly back and forth between the nursery cells and the food cells, but she had a good heart and thought it was because Nuova was sick, perhaps, for bees often get ill just as we do. She spoke to Nuova rather sharply, but still in a kindly way.

"Nuova! what are you doing here? You mustn't stop."

"But I am so tired," replied poor Nuova. "Thank you for driving them away," she added.

"I am so tired," replied poor Nuova

"Tired, nonsense," said Saggia. "That's nothing. Of course you are tired. We all are. But what difference does that make? Go back to the babies, and keep on with your work."

"That is what they all say," cried Nuova, bitterly and half angrily. "Here am I a full week out of my nursery cell, and I haven't had a bit of rest or fun yet. It is time I began to have some. Doesn't any one ever rest or have a good time?"

Saggia was painfully surprised to hear Nuova talk in this manner. She began to fear that Nuova's tiredness was not just physical tiredness. She answered her therefore in a strongly reproving manner. "Of course nobody rests, and of course every one has a good time. Look at them all," and she waved an antenna toward the workers at the nursery cells, "don't you see what a good time they are having? It is having a good time to be always working; always working for each other and for our children."

"But they aren't our children," Nuova broke in, "yours and mine, that is, nor anybody's but the Queen's children. She is the mother of them all. And she keeps on having more. And we have to take care of them all, and all the time."

"They are our children," Saggia interrupted, speaking very positively and still more reprovingly. "They are the children of the community; the children of the race. It is our race we are working for; the children of the race. Think of it!"

Nuova made a little face. "Well, I am tired of the race and the race's children," she said. "I want some children of my own."

Old Saggia was dreadfully shocked by this. And she was terrified on Nuova's account for fear some other bees might have heard her. It was, indeed, about as rebellious a thing as a bee can say.

"Hush, child," said Saggia in a whisper. "You mustn't say such things. You mustn't even think them. Other bees don't. And you must hurry back to your work before the others miss you." She helped Nuova up, and urged her to begin climbing back up to the nurse cells. "If you are tired of taking care of the babies you can do something else next week. You will be old enough then to make wax and build cells or help clean the hive. And then in another week you can go out and gather pollen and nectar from the flowers. But go back now to the babies; the other nurses are looking for you." She urged Nuova along again, and this time Nuova started up, but she went very reluctantly and slowly.

"No," she said, "they pay no attention to me. Nobody but you pays any attention to me, except when I stop working. They never notice me when I am hard at work."

"Why, of course not," replied Saggia gently. "Why should you be noticed then? That is what we all do all the time; just keep everlastingly at it. That is what makes the bees such a great people. There is something wrong about a bee that doesn't want to work all the time; you mustn't be different from the others. I am afraid you are sick."

All the time she was saying this Saggia was urging Nuova along up the comb toward the nursery cells, and now they had quite reached the group of nurses. As Uno, Due, and Tre saw Nuova again they closed in around her so as to strike or pinch her. But Saggia kept them off. And Nuova slipped into her place again in front of a hungry baby.

CHAPTER IV

Nuova sees Some Other Things Done

Just as Nuova took her place again, however, she heard in the distance a joyful singing. It came from the lightest place in the hive, and looking in this direction Nuova saw a whole group of nectar gatherers coming along together, half-dancing and turning about, and all singing together in the happiest way possible. This is what they sang:

Take a peep into the pail,
Nectar to the brim,
Carried over down and dale
Till the ways were dim.

On a dawn-ray forth we sped,
A thousand wings in tune,
By a new-born wind were led
Down the paths of June.

Silvery world of buzz and whirr,
Fragrance on the wing,
Sod and root and blade astir,
Sped our garnering.

Long in Nature's honey-room
We dipped and drank at will;
Brushed the purple lilac plume,
Sipped from thyme and dill.

Till when evening softly bore
Over dune and dell,
Hastened we with golden store
Home to Queen and cell.

And then she heard another song, and saw a group of pollen gatherers following the nectar gatherers. And this is what they sang:

Here's saffron dust and crimson dust,
And dust of rarest blue;
In lavish Nature's pollen mines
Each mines his favorite hue.

Some buzzed and burrowed all the morn
Within a clover hold,
Till fuzzy backs were powdered fine
And thigh-bags bulged with gold.

And some delved deep in lily cups,
Or hung from blossomy bells—
The story of their mazy flight
The rainbow treasure tells.

There's pollen sweet for roof and wall,
And more for soft bee-bread;
For all, from wondrous Mother-Queen
To bee-mite, must be fed.

Here's palest pink and lilac dust,
And green and brown and blue;
In lavish Nature's pollen fields
Each finds his favorite hue.

They liked their work, these foragers, that was sure, and Nuova felt that she would like that kind of work too. Just then Mela, one of the pollen gatherers, climbing up the comb where Nuova was, with her pollen baskets filled by two great masses of golden yellow pollen, stopped for a moment for breath. Nuova stretched her antenna toward Mela and touched her, attracting her attention.

She would like that kind of work.

"Oh, Mela, tell me about it," she said to her eagerly. "Do you hear the birds sing and see the butterflies dance out there? Mela, take me with you when you go back."

Mela was very much astonished to hear a pretty young nurse bee talk to her this way, and she looked first sharply and then rather contemptuously at Nuova.

"You upstart young thing," she said, "take you out with us? Well, I rather think not until you have finished your nursing work. And you are loafing now! Well, you will do your work better in the hive or you can never go out at all, that's sure."

And Uno, Due, and Tre, who had overheard this conversation, buzzed at her one after another: "Lazy! Loafer! Shirk!" and they tried to strike her once more, but Saggia, who had not yet gone down to the floor, again kept them off and whispered rapidly to Nuova:

"Yes, you shall go out some time. But you must be a good bee and do your work in the hive first, nurse the babies, then help make wax and build cells. So go on with your work now. Hurry, the soldiers are coming, and they have their stings all ready for loafing bees as well as for wasps and black bees that come to rob us. Hurry, hurry!"

Saggia pushed Nuova back into her place, and Uno, Due, and Tre also hurried to their own places as the marching song of the Amazons was heard. Into the hive and down the long aisles between the great vertical walls of comb they came marching rapidly and brandishing their long, sharp lances all ready for use. This was their song:

Now fierce black bee and yellow wasp
With cunning seek to rush the hive;
Up warriors, aim the poisoned dart,
Let no bold hornet pass alive!

Defenders of the golden stores,
Swoop down upon the robber band,
No foe escapes the Amazon spears,
For Hive and Queen we make our stand!

As they finished their song the files of the Amazons broke up and the soldiers scattered themselves through the hive, although most of them kept in the lighter part near the entrance.

In the special quiet that followed the cessation of the song Nuova heard a voice calling loudly from a group of bees near the wax-making festoon at the unfinished end of the comb. This group was busily engaged in moulding new cells, using the wax which was being made by the bees in the living festoon.

"Look here," called the voice, which was that of Cera, chief of the cell-builders and wax-makers, "we must have more wax-makers." She waved an antenna toward the festoon. "They can't furnish us wax fast enough. Some of you older nurses come here."

Nuova who had stopped working and stepped a little out from the group of nurses at Cera's first words, now started quickly to go over to her. Uno, Due, and Tre all called angrily to her and tried to stop her but Nuova easily evaded them and hurried over, with several other nurses following, to Cera.

"Let me make wax," she said eagerly to Cera.

Cera looked at her, then away and to the others. "You! No, you are too young," she said. Then more loudly to the others: "More wax-makers, I say, and right away."

But Nuova insisted. "Take me," she urged. "Teach me to make wax."

Cera stared at her. "What a funny bee! Teach you! That shows you are not old enough. If you were you would know without any teaching. Bees don't have to be taught. They simply know how to do everything they need to when the right time comes for doing it. And if they don't know it is because the right time hasn't come."

But Nuova still stood squarely in front of her. Cera stared at her more and more surprised and more and more angry. "Here," she said finally, and very roughly, "keep out of the way. Go back to your babies."

Nuova fluttered her wings angrily and her sensitive antennæ trembled. "I won't," she said. "I won't be nurse any more; I'll make wax or go out for pollen. Yes, I'll go out into the garden."

Then she actually started to run toward the hive entrance, but was promptly stopped by Saggia, who had noticed her altercation with Cera and had hurried over.

Cera who had only half heard Nuova's angry outburst was nevertheless greatly astonished, and was about to make an indignant reply and to call the attention of the other bees to the audacious little rebel, but the candidates to make wax crowded about her so closely and chattered so distractingly to her that all thought of Nuova was, fortunately, immediately driven out of her mind.

In the meantime Nuova was tugging away from Saggia, and had even dragged her a little along toward the entrance. But Saggia held fast to one wing, and at the same time talked to her rapidly.

"Nuova, stop!" she said in a low voice, at the same time glancing back to see if the crowd around Cera was noticing them. "You mustn't say such things. Bees never do. Listen, you can make wax. Listen to me, I'll tell you what to do."

Nuova stopped tugging at the poor old bee, who was getting rather breathless and could hardly go on with her speaking. What she had last said, however, made Nuova want to hear more.

So as Nuova stopped pulling away Saggia went on talking. "The first thing the wax-makers do is to go to the pantry cells and eat all the honey and pollen they can. Then they all crowd together in close rows like that," pointing to the festoon of wax-makers, "so as to get very warm, and pretty soon the wax begins to come. It comes out in little drops on your wax-plates"—touching one of the ten curious little five-sided plates on the under side of Nuova's body—"and hardens right away into a thin sheet of wax on each one of the plates. Now all you have to do is to keep quiet and just mix with the others when they go to the food cells to eat and drink. Say nothing to any one, and nobody will pay any attention to you, not even Cera, as long as you are busy. There, see, they are going," she added, as the group around Cera began to break up, some of the bees going back to the babies while others, who had been accepted by Cera, moved to the open food cells and began eating pollen greedily and taking long drinks of honey.

"Slip over among them," said Saggia in a whisper, "and stuff yourself. Then go when they do to the festoon and hang on to it."

Nuova was so eager to try this new experience that she hardly paused to thank Saggia, although she did let a grateful smile flit over her pretty fresh face as she hurried away.

Just as she reached the food cells she heard a gentle, rather monotonous singing, and glancing in the direction of the group of cell-builders and wax-makers from which it came she saw that under the direction of Cera who had already rejoined her workers, the cell-builders were going through a sort of dance or rhythmic gymnastics, moving their bodies and waving their wings and legs in a sort of exaggerated imitation of moulding and building, and that the wax-makers in the festoon were buzzing their wings to make their bodies warmer and swinging back and forth, and that all of them together were singing a pretty song about their work. This is the song they sang:

Cling close in living curtain,
One thousand swing as one,
Now ooze the amber jellies—
The work has just begun.

Haste, mould the dainty wax flakes
And ply the trowels swift;
Pat, pat—the floors spread wider;
Tap, tap—the light walls lift.

Through all the long hive-twilight,
The patterned cell draw true;—
Tap, tap, with tiny trowel,
We've neither nail nor screw.

Ten thousand honey pantries
And rooms for pollen store;—
Build high the whole bee-city,
And still there's need of more.

As the song and motion dance ceased, Cera called loudly again. This time she wanted cleaners to come. "Here," she cried. "Cleaners! Let a cleaner come. We are getting too much dust on the floor. Cleaners! Cleaners!"

But no one came. Cera, looking impatiently about, saw Nuova glancing up from the food cell over which she was standing, and motioned to her. "Here, you," she said, without seeming to remember that it was with Nuova that she had just had a dispute, "you don't seem to be doing much. You run down to those cleaners," pointing to several cleaners on the floor near the great pear-shaped cell, "and tell one to come here right away. Look lively, now."

Nuova, who seemed always ready for a new thing, gladly ran down the comb to the floor and danced happily across it to a bee that was busily cleaning and touched her with her antennæ. As the cleaner looked up Nuova said: "Cera wants you; they are making too much dust over there."

The cleaner straightened up a little and without a word shuffled slowly across to a place just under the festoon and began to clean the floor there. Nuova started to follow her, rather dawdling along, for the prospect of hanging motionless in a wax-making festoon was not especially attractive to her, when she was startled by the falling at her feet of a lump of something soft and sticky-looking. She looked up and saw far up on the vertical wall of the comb rising above her a bee peering down at her and the lump. This bee was indeed right up by the roof of the hive. As the bee saw Nuova look up she called to her loudly and rather gruffly, "I say, pretty young bee, bring me up that lump of propolis, won't you?"

Nuova picked up the soft brownish ball in her mouth and climbed quickly up to the top of the comb with it. As she offered it to the waiting bee on the ceiling, she found it sticking to her teeth in a very uncomfortable way.

"Oh, the sticky stuff," she said in disgust, "and how it tastes and smells!"

The bee to whom she was awkwardly trying to give it, whose name was Fessa, and who was a crack-filler, replied disgustedly and wonderingly: "Oh, the stupid bee. And it smells like what it is. And that's propolis. And when you've worked with it day and night for a week, as you will sometime, you will learn how to handle it, and not be sickened by its smell. It has really a good healthy smell, for it comes from beautiful great pine trees and balsam firs."

"Oh," cried Nuova, "from outdoors? From the garden where the flowers and butterflies are? Shan't I go out and get you some?" And she turned as if to start right away.

Fessa was much astonished, and as she was an irritable bee, she was angry too. "What?" she cried. "Well, you really are a stupid bee. Go out? You—you silly young thing. Don't you know you can't go out until it is time for you to go? And then you'll have to go whether you want to or not. Don't you know that bees do things according to custom? You don't do what you like: you like what you do. That's the bee way, you stupid. What kind of bee are you, anyway? Here now, hand over that stuff, and go back to your work." And Fessa took the last of the propolis from her very roughly.

"What?" she cried, "Well, you really are a stupid Bee"

Nuova, who did not like to be handled so roughly, and talked to so sharply, was almost in tears. She seemed to be always getting reproved. However, she said rather maliciously to Fessa: "Well, do you like to work with that sticky stuff? What do you do with it, anyway?"

But Fessa had already turned back to her work and paid no attention to her. In fact she had already begun, with her two or three other crack-filling companions, to sing a slow, "sticky" sort of song, as they kept stuffing propolis into a crack in the roof. Although I cannot give you the strange, monotonous melody of the song, I can give you the words. They were these:

We're the soft putty crew,
Dripping the oozy glue,
Squeezing our resins through
Cranny and crack.

Stuffing with pure cement
Crevice and chink and rent,
Where creeping airs have sent
Warning of Bee Moth bent
On sly attack.

Yes, we are the safety crew,
Spreading with trowel true
Fragrant and golden glue,
Gumming each crack.

CHAPTER V

Nuova sees Bee Moth and gets acquainted with Beffa

As the crack-fillers kept on singing their monotonous song over and over while they worked, and as they paid no attention whatever to Nuova, she turned away after a few minutes of listening to them, and stared around her.

It was the first time she had been clear up to the roof of the hive and she saw that here, as at the bottom, there was a low, free space for the whole length and breadth of the hive. It was rather dark up here, and very warm and stuffy, for the warm air rising from the body of the hive could not escape, as the propolis workers had filled all of the crevices and cracks in the roof and where the great flat roof-board rested on the vertical sides of the hive.

Nuova felt glad she was not a crack-filler, and turned to go down to the wax-making group where she belonged, when she saw a curious, dusky-gray creature, not a bee, although with big eyes and long antennæ and wings, which are all things that bees have also. But this creature's body was much slenderer than a bee's, its antennæ very much longer and slenderer, and its wings not only longer, but covered over, as was the body, with myriads of small scales and hairs. These wings were so folded that they covered all the back and most of the sides of the body and trailed out beyond the tip of the body. The creature was walking rapidly and nervously along the broad, upper edge of the comb on which Nuova stood, and seemed to be quite at home in the dim light of this space just under the roof.

Nuova stared at the creature a moment, and then began to approach her. But the creature had stepped quickly over the edge and was now running rapidly down the face of the comb. In this lighter place Nuova could see that she was engaged in hiding every here and there small, white eggs that she seemed to carry somewhere in her body. She would dart nervously in one direction and then another, hesitating a moment after each swift movement long enough to drop an egg in an open cell or squeeze it into a crack in the comb.

Nuova, not being able to catch up with the creature, called loudly to her a couple of times. "Who are you? What are you doing?" she cried; but the creature did not reply, but only worked at her egg-hiding the more rapidly. Nuova called to her again, this time so loudly that the attention of several bees in the group of nurses was attracted.

The minute they saw the creature, they set up a great shouting and began racing after her.

"Bee Moth! Bee Moth! After her!" they cried. "Call the soldiers! Amazons! here! here!"

Nuova was amazed at the uproar, and then she was shocked to see how the Amazons and all the bees in fact dashed at the poor Bee Moth and began to tear her literally to pieces. First her long antennæ and then her wings were torn off and brandished in the air victoriously, and then her delicate body was stung and hacked into bits, and the fragments tossed down to the floor to be picked up and thrown out of the hive by the cleaners. And during all this violent scene, which horrified Nuova because, strange as it may seem, she really did not understand the reason for it, all the bees kept up the most excited buzzing and exclaiming.

"The villain!" they cried; "when did she get in? Has she laid any eggs? How did she get in? Who saw her first? Where did she lay her eggs?"

Some began now to peer about for the eggs, while others continued to talk and gesticulate.

Uno, who had been standing silent for a moment as if in thought, suddenly spoke up loudly, while she looked significantly at Nuova.

"Nuova saw her first," she said; "she called to us."

At that several of the bees turned to Nuova.

"Nuova, Nuova, saw her first!" they cried. "Did she lay any eggs? Why didn't you call us sooner? Did she lay any eggs, we say?"

"Why, yes," Nuova answered innocently, "a good many; all the way from up there"—indicating the top of the comb—"clear down to—to—" and Nuova shuddered so she could not finish.

With this the bees burst out into a new, violent excitement, and they seemed to be very angry with poor Nuova. "Bee Moth laid a lot of eggs!" they shouted. "Nuova saw her! Nuova let her! The stupid one! The faithless one! Kill her! Kill her!" And they crowded around Nuova in a most threatening manner, some trying to strike her, and two or three Amazons trying to reach her with their lances. Nuova thought her fate was to be that of Bee Moth's, and it really seemed so for a moment. And then Saggia was heard calling loudly.

"The stupid one! The faithless one!"

"A crack! There must be a crack! She must have come in through a crack! She couldn't have come in past the guards at the door."

This distracted the attention of the bees from Nuova, for at once they all turned toward Saggia and began shouting all together: "A crack! There's a crack somewhere! Why haven't the crack-fillers found it?"

Then they all began to crowd toward and clamor at the propolis-workers, who, up on their scaffolding, scowled down on the mob, seemingly unafraid and unexcited.

"Well," said Fessa roughly, "find the crack and we'll fill it. That's all we've got to say. Find the crack."

"Yes, that's right," spoke up Saggia loudly. "Some of us hunt for the crack, and some hunt for the eggs and break them or throw them out. Every one that isn't found and hatches in the hive means danger for us. Find them all."

At this the bees all began hunting about for the crack and the eggs. Every now and then an egg would be found and with a loud shout it would be seized and thrown down to the floor of the hive. Nuova, disheveled and still trembling from the fright caused by the attack of the bees on her, crept down to the floor at the side of the hive just under the wax-makers, who had paid no attention to all the hubbub. From here she was looking on at the search for the eggs with astonishment, when Saggia, who had been looking anxiously about for her, saw her and came over close to her.

"Go up and get back into your place in the wax-curtain, and they'll forget all about you," she whispered. "But why didn't you shout out about the Bee Moth when you first saw her?"

"But why should I?" answered Nuova blankly and rather bitterly. "She was such a pretty and such an interesting creature."

Saggia raised her antennæ in astonishment and despair. "Nuova, you are a funny bee. You are so different. What is the matter with you anyway? Don't you know—but, of course, for some extraordinary reason you don't—that your 'pretty and interesting creature' is one of the most dangerous enemies we have? From any of her eggs that we don't find and break, there will hatch a horrible little grub that will keep hidden in the cracks or dark places in the hive, feeding on the wax of the cells and on the pollen and honey, too, and spinning wherever it goes a terrible, sticky, silken web that catches our feet and wings and interferes with our getting around easily. And if there are enough of the Bee Moth's grubs they spin so much web that finally we can't carry on our work in the hive at all, and all our babies starve and the Queen starves, and the whole community goes to ruin. 'Pretty and interesting,' indeed; she is sneaky and despicable, that's what she is. And if you ever see another, rush for her at once and call everybody. Being pretty doesn't necessarily mean being good."

"Yes; but, Saggia," said Nuova slowly, "if her grubs have to have wax and pollen and honey for food, and if there is nobody but Bee Moth to get them for them, and she can't, of course, doesn't she rather have to lay her eggs in a bee-hive where, when her grubby babies hatch out, there will be enough food for them? And don't they have to spin the web to keep us bees from killing them as soon as we see them?"

Saggia stared at her; and then, strange as it may seem, even this old bee began to understand a little that Nuova's mind was a bit different from that of the other bees in the hive, and that she had a heart that could be hurt even by the killing of a dangerous enemy of the hive. However, Saggia contented herself with repeating, "Well, you are a funny bee!" and then she urged Nuova again to start up the comb to the group of wax-makers, and went back to see how the search for Bee Moth's eggs was getting on.

Just as Nuova was about to begin climbing up, she heard a strong, buzzing sound near her and found that she was almost stumbling over a bee that was standing in a most odd position, with its head down and almost touching the floor, and its body lifted up at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, and all of its wings going like mad, although it was not, of course, beating its wings to fly, for it remained constantly in the same position. There were two or three other bees near this one doing the same thing, and farther away, nearer the hive entrance, were two or three more.

The wing-buzzing bee nearest Nuova, whose name was Aria, seemed to be quite vexed with Nuova, for she said to her sharply: "Look out where you are going, you stupid! Are you blind and deaf?"

Nuova was startled, and rather frightened, too, by the sharp speech, but her curiosity was even stronger than her fear. "Good gracious!" she said; "what are you doing?"

"What matter to you what I am doing?" said Aria, in a thick, "buzzy" voice. "I am doing my work—which is more than you seem to be doing. Aren't you bee enough yet to know that each of us has her own appointed work and does it without worrying about what others are doing? If we all do our work, then the whole community gets on all right. So if you will look out for your work, I'll look out for mine."

Here Aria buzzed more energetically than ever for a moment without saying anything. Then she began speaking again, "Still if you have to be told, you pretty little stupid bee, I'll tell you that I and my companions are ventilating the hive, and if we should stop to loaf and moon about like you, you and all the rest of us would suffocate, that's what you'd do." And she stopped talking. But in a moment she began to sing a curious little song which was partly made up of just buzzing and humming, and partly of words. These were the words of her song, in which all the other ventilating bees joined:

Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz;
Back and forth, back and forth,
Fanning and stirring and driving and churning;
Old air we're forcing forth, new air's returning.
On our heads all the day;
This is the only way
We can keep sweet the hive
And our dear bees alive.

Whirr, whirr, whirr, whirr;
Roundabout, roundabout,
Living fans ceaselessly driving and churning;
Foul air we're forcing forth, fresh air's returning.
Upside down all the day;
Beating our wings away;
So we keep sweet the hive
And our dear bees alive.

While the ventilating bees were singing and Nuova stood idly watching and listening to them, a small, old drone bee with crumpled-up, that is, deformed wings, came, half walking and half comically hopping, down the long aisle between the vertical combs from the back and darker part of the hive. He was humming a song to himself as he came along. Beffa was the name of the deformed bee, and he was the jester of the hive, as could be guessed by his hopping way of walking, and by the words of his song.

When Nuova heard Beffa singing, she turned toward him, but did not interrupt him. She was ever so much interested in his appearance, and by his sort of hopping dance which he kept up all the time he was singing, and by the song itself, which told her something about him, but not enough. As he stopped singing, Nuova spoke, speaking to herself at first, and then to him.

"Oh, what a funny bee," she said. "You are a bee, aren't you?"

Beffa stared at her a moment, then made her a deep, mocking bow and gave a hop or two. "Yes, pretty one, which is, of course, to say, stupid one, I be a bee—just as you be, only not just so, for I be doing my work, which I don't see that you be." Then he hopped comically about, humming to himself the refrain of his song.

No one, however, paid any attention to him except Nuova, who exclaimed rather petulantly: "Oh, work, work, work; always that word!"

"Yes," said Beffa, mockingly bowing and hopping about her, "but not always that work"; imitating grotesquely for a moment Nuova's idle attitude.

"Do you call that hopping and singing work?" indignantly exclaimed Nuova. "Why don't you go and nurse babies?"

Beffa, who was again at his hopping and humming, stopped a moment to stare at her in surprise; then replied, in a sing-song: "I can't, oh, I can't nurse babies."

"Then make wax," said Nuova.

"I can't, oh, I can't make wax," hummed Beffa.

"Then build a comb, or fill cracks, or clean the floor, or"—and she pointed to the ventilating bees near them—"ventilate," persisted Nuova.

"I can't," sang again Beffa, "oh, I can't build cells, or fill cracks, or scrub floors, or—" and he broke off suddenly with a sort of catch in his voice.

But Nuova blindly persisted. "Well, then, why don't you go out and gather pollen and bring nectar; out into the sunshine, out into the garden."

The poor, deformed bee, now angry, indeed, began jumping up and down violently right in front of Nuova, and then suddenly whirled around, bringing his back and crumpled wings fairly in her face. "Oh, silly little pretty, pretty little silly!" he cried; "which is to say, blind one, stupid one, heartless one, would I like to go out, out into the warm sunshine, out into the fragrant garden! Would I like to go! Blind, stupid, brutal one!"

When Nuova saw the poor, crumpled-up, useless wings, she suddenly understood, and she felt like striking herself in the face as she realized all the stupid, brutal things she had said. "Oh, you poor, poor bee!" she cried as she touched Beffa caressingly again and again with her antennæ. "I didn't see; I didn't understand; I am so sorry! Won't you forgive me? Please?"

Beffa, though partly appeased, was still half angry, and still spoke bitterly. "Oh, you do understand now! You do understand why I hop and sing; why I dance for the Queen; and why I do anything I can do when I can't do other things; can't do what a drone ought to do, fly wide and high in the Great Courting Chase after the Princess. I am glad you understand now. But hush, listen!" He whirled around, facing toward the great pear-shaped cell in the lower center of the comb. "Hark! Principessa, the new Princess, calls. Hark!"

Beffa and Nuova stood silent and expectant, facing toward the Princess's cell as did all the other bees. There was a tense excitement everywhere. Nuova felt that something very important was happening. And then came a strange sound, first faint and low, then louder and shriller. It was the piping of the young Princess shut up in her great cell, but ready now to come out. It sent a shiver of excitement through all the bees. Ventilators stopped buzzing and wax-makers and comb-builders turned their faces intently toward the sound, and even the crack-fillers, far up at the roof, stopped their work and peered down excitedly.

There had come, indeed, one of the most exciting and tense moments that ever come to a bee community. It was the moment that precedes the birth of a new royal bee, a Princess who is destined to be the new Queen of the hive, or to go out from the hive with many of the workers to establish a new community of her own.

Again came the shrill piping of the Princess in the royal cell. Another wave of excitement ran over the hive. And again and again the weird sound came. Suddenly the royal nurses began excitedly to plaster wax on the outside of the great cell, especially over its mouth.

Beffa whispered to Nuova: "She is trying to work her way out, but they don't want to let her out yet. See, the drones are coming."

And even as he spoke a gay song was heard, in voices very different from any that Nuova had yet heard in the hive; and suddenly, as the song grew louder, there came a half-dancing, half-marching file of splendid-looking, robust bees, moving spiritedly directly toward the royal cell. They were a fine-looking lot, these drones, these dandy drones, and Nuova had a thrill she had never felt before. She gazed at them entranced.

The drones made a half-circle about the cell of the Princess and lined up there, strutting and dancing and singing loudly. This is the song they sang:

We are the courtiers, the beaux of the hive;
Of the dandy drones surely you've heard!
Our wings are a rainbow, our bodies are gold,
To soil them would be most absurd.

No, we never mix up with the common hive stuff,
Neither garner, nor plaster, nor clean;
'Tis superior far to be just what we are,
And do naught but make love to the Queen.

CHAPTER VI

Nuova and Hero, and the Birth of the Princess

All through their song Nuova had given the drones her absorbed attention. She admired them greatly for their fine appearance, and when she learned from their song that they did no work, but had all day only to follow their own sweet will, she became especially interested in them. She was a little puzzled, too, for, from what she had heard from Saggia and the others, and from all she had seen, she had come to believe that all bees worked all the time. And here were all these stout-bodied, vigorous bees proudly singing that they loafed all the days through. She was so much interested in this that she approached one end of the line of drones and spoke to the one nearest her.

"What a fine time you drones must have," she said. "Don't you ever have to do any work?"

The drone did not hear her at first and paid no attention to her, but as she repeated her question louder and more insistently, he turned and stared at her amazed.

"Well, well, bless my eyes!" he said, stammering in his amazement at being addressed by a common worker bee. "Bless my eyes! I say, work? Work? Me work? Who ever heard such a question? What sort of a bee are you? Who are you, anyway?" He touched the drone next to him to call his attention. "Look here, who is this bee?"

Nuova was nettled by his manner and by what he said. She answered, rather sharply, "Well, I'll tell you who I am. I am a bee that works; anyway, I am the kind of a bee that works, like all the others except you, and you" (looking defiantly at the second drone, who was staring insolently at her) "and I want to know why you do not work—you and you others that loaf around all the time and eat what we bring in, and do nothing but sing and dance in the hive, or fly around doing nothing in the garden, and keep all dressed up and just look handsome."

The drone was more and more astonished, but he was also a little flattered by her reference to his clothes and appearance.

"Well, you are a silly little bee," he said; "that's what we are here for. Drones work? It isn't done, you know. Our business is to love. And singing and dancing and looking handsome, and not getting all dusty with pollen and sticky with wax and dirty with cleaning, is part of it. That's our work; not working, but loving."

"Drones work? It isn't done, you know."

Nuova was so astonished by hearing this, and so excited to learn that some bees did not have to work, and also so angry to think that these bees were allowed to live without working, while she was always being told to work, and scolded for resting for even the shortest time, that when she answered him she spoke so loudly as to attract the attention of other bees near her, including Saggia, who was moving around near by, cleaning the floor.

"So that is what you call your work, is it?" she burst out. "Well, I am glad to know there is some kind of bee work besides feeding babies and sweating out wax and filling up cracks and scrubbing up floors. Loving, you call it; well, I want to do some of that; show me how."

The two drones were stupefied with astonishment by Nuova's words, but the one nearest her, to whom she was speaking directly, was rather taken by the audacity of the pretty little bee's demand, and he involuntarily strutted and swaggered a little and eyed her with special attention. He even smiled down at her rather pleasantly, and seemed to be about to speak to her again when Saggia and three or four other bees, who had heard her last words and were scandalized to see and hear her talking with the drone, especially in such a manner, bustled up to her.

This last unheard-of behavior of Nuova was too much for Saggia. Her patience and sympathy with her were exhausted, and she broke out in a tirade of scolding.

"Well, I never in my life!" she exclaimed, grasping Nuova and jerking her around; "what in the world are you doing and saying? Talking to a drone about love! You don't know anything about love. You can't know anything about it. Only drones and princesses know what love is, or can know. You are worse than a silly bee; you are a bad bee!" She jerked her again and again; at the same time she went on with her scolding. "Well, I wash my hands of you! If you can't be a sensible bee we don't want you! Our thinking has all been done for us long, long ago. All we have to do is what custom tells us to. And if you can't behave as the rest of us do, you are useless. Here, take her, throw her out of the hive!"

Again Saggia jerked her vigorously, and other bees, especially Uno, Due, and Tre, hustled her and struck at her. A couple of soldiers even came up and began jabbing at her with their lances. Poor Nuova seemed about to be torn piecemeal, like the Bee Moth, and turned out of the hive, when one of the drones, who was in the line some little distance from Nuova and Saggia, was attracted by the uproar. He came over to the group in a lordly and leisurely manner, shouldering his way through the crowd and carelessly driving off the jostling bees. They left Nuova reluctantly, casting dark looks and making malevolent gestures toward her as they turned their attention again to the excitement still raging about the cell of the Princess. Poor Nuova, half dead from her ill-treatment, could hardly utter her thanks to her rescuer. In a weak voice she attempted to say something, but finding it too much of an effort she contented herself with looking up gratefully into the face of the newcomer. He looked down at her curiously.

"What is the matter with you?" he said, not unkindly. "Can you not do as other bees do? What are you—a nurse, a wax-maker, or what? Why don't you stick to your work? Why don't you do what you are expected to do? Are you one of those dreadful creatures they call 'new bees'?"

Nuova, although still weak and faint from her jostling and fright, was made angry again by these questions. "I do not know what I am," she said, "but I'd rather die than be just a puppet in this hive. Is all my life cut out for me, and not according to what I want to do and can do, but just according to rules made by somebody I don't know anything about and who doesn't know anything about me?"

She tried to say more, but a faintness came over her, and she staggered a little and would have fallen if the drone had not unconsciously put a wing behind her and supported her. She looked up at him, unable to thank him in words, but expressing her gratitude in her eyes.

As she rested this way, leaning heavily against him, she closed her eyes, happy to be protected, and even feeling strange little thrills running over her body that were mysteriously enjoyable. Without opening her eyes she murmured: "I am very grateful to you. You are very good." He said nothing, but looked with more and more interest at the sweet-faced little bee beside him.

Soon she opened her eyes again, and this time a pathetic little smile ran over her face. Indeed, it grew to be a roguish smile as an interesting idea formed more and more clearly in her brain.

"But you," she said—"aren't you rather breaking bee tradition by helping me? If I am a useless bee, and only in the way, and a trouble to the community, shouldn't you let them sting me and throw me out of the hive? Are you" (she smiled again)—"are you, a—new bee, too?"

The drone, whose name was Hero, and who was truly the handsomest and finest drone in the hive, was first surprised and then a little embarrassed by what Nuova was saying. He looked rather fearfully around to see if other bees were observing them and tried gently to take his wing from behind Nuova, who, however, on realizing his intention, gave new signs of weakness and leaned more heavily than ever on it. In fact, it must be confessed, she nestled as closely against him, enclosed by his protecting wings, as she could.

"No, I am not a new bee," he said, rather stiffly. "I know my duty, and I try to do it." He looked again into his companion's pretty face, and then spoke more gently.

"Still, I admit that some of our ways are old-fashioned, rather absurd in fact," he said, with a manner and voice growing more and more confidential. "I have often had a curious feeling as if I should like to work." He smiled down at her. "Terrible, isn't it? And sometimes it is pretty hard to work up a violent love for a Princess you never see until you are just about to dash after her in the Great Courting Chase. Still, that's something worth while. One such flight is excitement and exertion enough for a whole life."

"Have you ever done it?" asked Nuova, curiously and even a little enviously. "And did you win?"

"Yes," said Hero, "I have been in one chase. But I was so young my wings were hardly dry and, of course, I didn't win, or I shouldn't be here now. Don't you know that the winner always dies in the winning?"

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Nuova, shocked. "And how silly! To die just as you become King. How is it worth it?"

"What!" said Hero, surprised, and in a reproving and even stern voice. "Not worth while to win in the Great Courting Chase? To prove yourself the fastest and strongest and boldest of all the drones, and to be the consort of the Queen, the father of all the Queen's children? Not worth while dying for? What do I live for but that?"

"Ah, yes," cried Nuova, carried away for the moment by his enthusiasm, "that is something to live for!"

Suddenly, however, she realized that if Hero won in the Great Chase that was soon to occur—that is, would take place when the Princess, already trying to get out of her cell, was really out and ready for her wedding flight—he would really have to die for a bee, so far unseen and unknown, and who had done nothing to deserve such a sacrifice, and who would give her love as well to any other drone as to Hero, this handsome and kind new friend.

This made her angry and bitter again, and very sad, too, for she was beginning to realize that she liked this beautiful, strong bee much more than she liked Saggia or Beffa. He was different from all the other bees she knew, and her liking for him was different. She wanted to be with him all the time, and to have him talk to her or even just to look at her. This must be loving, she thought, or part of it, anyway. She began to dislike this Princess that was soon to come out of her cell. Probably she would be very beautiful. When she thought of that she disliked her more than ever. She could not bear to think of Hero's loving her or of her loving Hero.

She looked keenly at Hero, and then spoke to him slowly and cautiously, growing suddenly wise because of her new feeling for him.