My sleep was interrupted by I know not what strange dreams or fantasies.
I suppose I was shaking my wings or my legs unduly, when a kindly nurse
laid her hands on me.
“What troubles you?” she asked.
I did not immediately answer, because I was at a loss for a reply and
seemed still to be clinging to the edge of things. Such wonderful vistas
had been opened to me, I suppose I acted like one entranced.
“I don’t know,” I answered at last.
“Wake up a bit, then.”
Again I seemed quite alone, although all around me hundreds of my
brothers were sleeping, or working at their manifold tasks.
It was still very dark, but I began to move about drowsily, giving no
heed to the way. From comb to comb I clambered, passing over unexplored
regions. Presently I came to what was clearly the outermost comb. I
saw a lot of workers tugging and pulling at the cells. I stopped and
watched them. Each cell had its bee or bees busily engaged upon it.
They would seize the sides of it with their sharp mandibles, and, by
dint of biting and drawing, extend it little by little. I could see
that it was a laborious process, this building of comb. I was standing
quite still, looking on and meditating, when, without ceremony, one of
the comb-builders rushed up to me and began to touch my body, then left
as suddenly as he had come. Instantly I was inclined to resent this
treatment, and called to him as he turned:
“What is all this about?”
He did not stop to answer, and I was left to discover that he had
mistaken me for a comb-grower. Just what that meant I was soon brought to
understand.
Hours passed and still I hung around the comb-builders, until I felt that
I had mastered the secret of the art. Then slowly I turned and made my
way back to my home cell, tired, but greatly pleased with my experiences.
I suppose I must have slept, for with startling suddenness it dawned on
me that the night had passed. The faintest light was coming into our
hive, and over the whole colony there was ringing the early summons to
the field. The cry caught me and unconsciously I moved forward with the
workers, a solid stream of them making way to the entrance. I, too,
passed out, and once more—now the full dawn upon me—stopped upon the
alighting-board and flapped my wings, essaying flight, only to find that
I could not lift myself.
I was distressed and sick at heart. I wanted to go—I knew not where;
but instead, there I was, an obstruction; and I could not immediately
re-enter the hive on account of the outward press of workers. The growing
light, and then the sudden burst of the sun, quite fascinated me. Besides
this, the flight of a thousand of my brothers, each taking the note of
the field-worker when about to embark, filled me with longing to go into
the wide world that spread around and that called me with infinitely
tender phrases.
I suppose I was acting strangely, as well as blockading the entrance,
when one of the guards mildly remonstrated with me and suggested
my re-entering the hive. By this time practically all the veteran
honey-gatherers had gone, and indeed those first out were beginning to
return, chanting the song that tells of a successful foray into the
fields. So, following the mandate of the guard, I seized the opportunity
of falling in the wake of a laden bee. Instinctively I followed him.
He rushed along like mad, darting into the hive, and then over the
bottom-board to a point where a bridge of wax stretched downward within
his reach. Up it he scampered, with me at his heels, until he came to the
very spot where the workers had been building cells the night before.
Finding one to his liking, he buried himself in it, and in a moment had
emptied his sac, depositing the honey at the bottom of the cell. Before
I could turn around from inspecting what he had done he had gone. He
appeared delighted to think he had been one of the first to return with
a load, and as he went out I heard him calling aloud to his fellows to
follow him, for he had found a new rich harvest field.
I hurried along and reached the alighting-board in time to see him fly,
closely pursued by half-a-dozen eager workers. I rambled about on the
alighting-board, constantly buzzing my wings for I knew not what reason,
when I overheard one say:
“There’s that Happy again!”
It made no difference to me, for I was determined to stay to watch the
incoming bees, and presently the worker I had followed inside returned
and, at the briefest intervals, those that had gone with him. And now a
real sensation was astir. These half-a-dozen all began to cry aloud:
“Hurry—hurry—honey—honey.”
In the briefest space a multitude was flying over the field to I knew not
what rich storehouse. Indeed, every worker, on returning, was told the
great news, and from one I gathered that a colony was being robbed, that
something tremendous had happened. _The Queen had died!_