_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 antennae
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 antennae. 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.
[Illustration: "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.