On the earlier occasion of the loss of the Queen there had been a brief
spasm of despair; but it had yielded, for the possibility of rearing
another rose uppermost. Now that possibility had vanished. There was
absolutely no hope. Death stalked abroad, and one by one, the eldest
first, the bees would go to their doom. There were no young bees to take
their places, nothing but dust and darkness.
Several days passed, when one morning a great cry rang through the hive
that eggs had been found and that queen-cells had been started. It was a
strange and pathetic mystery, for we knew that we had no Queen, and yet
exulted over the finding of eggs.
Still hoping beyond hope, we tried to create a Queen from the eggs—all in
vain. The eggs we now found deposited freely—one, two, or half-a-dozen
in a cell—were the eggs of an impostor, a would-be Queen, called a
fertile worker.
Strangely enough, too, we began to work in a half-hearted way, gathering
honey, feeding the brood of the impostor, and yet we knew or seemed to
know that there would emerge but worthless drones. Hope still lingered in
our hearts, but daily it grew more faint until despair overcame us.
One morning Crip and I were brooding over our affairs when we saw the
Master and his Shadow approaching. They stopped near us.
“Something has happened,” said the Master; “something is wrong. We do not
need the smoker. Here, son, lend me a hand!”
“A fertile worker—an impostor!” he exclaimed, on lifting up a frame from
the brood-chamber. “See those eggs dropped haphazard! A Queen never does
that.”
“Why, there are six in one cell!” cried the Shadow.
“Run, son, and bring me that Italian Queen in the new cage.”
In a few minutes the cry of a Queen rang through the hive. Crip and I
flew toward it, and presently paused beside the trap which contained a
most beautiful Queen. But she was not _our_ Queen, and now a riot was
started. “Kill her—kill her!” broke on all sides. While Crip and I took
no part, we entered no protest—we stood almost alone.
Over the cage, biting and clawing, a mob of bees, incited partly by
the impostor, endeavored to reach the royal personage. They meant to
kill her; first, because she was not of our tribe; secondly, because
the impostor had come to own an ascendency over the colony. It was a
strange fate, as Crip explained, that we should cling to an impostor and
die rather than bring an alien to reign over us. But Crip and I were
thinking, and so were many of our little brothers. Crip, on occasion, now
gave her food through the wire screen; while I found it convenient to
hang about the place. In the mean time the impostor spread her vile brood
over the hive, and kept up her conspiracy against the Queen the Master
had given us.
Several days passed, and the Master, returning, found what he thought
a reconciliation. He opened the cage and out walked the most beautiful
Queen I had ever seen, except my own Queen-Mother. Instantly, however, a
troop of hostile bees, evidently led by the impostor, fell upon her, and
in a moment she was in the center of a “ball” and being slowly crushed to
death.
The Master was watching, however, and quickly rescued her and restored
her to the cage.
“They are not ready to receive her, son,” he said. “In fact, unless we
can destroy the fertile worker, that horrid impostor, we may not succeed.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Crip, to me that night as we stood by the cage
and listened to the regal call of the Queen, “that I shall fight the
first bee that comes near her.”
“And so shall I.”
Crip had just given her some honey, and was standing near her on the
screen when an ugly bee, unusually large, came up and caught hold of one
of her legs which had protruded through the meshes of the cage. He laid
hold of it and pulled it with all his might, and the Queen began to cry
with pain, when Crip rushed to the rescue.
A terrific battle ensued. I tried to help, and did seize the vicious
bee by one wing, only to be kicked off. But Crip had grappled him in
his vise-like mandibles, and I saw it was a battle to the death. Over
and over they whirled, finally to fall to the bottom of the hive—still
fighting. I followed as fast as I might, and when I reached where they
lay they had ceased to struggle—both were dead.
A lance wound in his heart had finished my beloved friend.
“Crip—Crip!” I cried aloud; but got no answer. One little foot moved a
few times, then was still.
Almost simultaneously an alarm sounded. The impostor had disappeared.