Vernon L. Kellogg

“ I tell you that we have a means of saving our hive. Sometimes a bee is born, who is not a Princess, but who is of a different sort from the rest of us workers; a bee who can not only work, but love; who can love and be loved and be the mother of bees."
She turned now swiftly to Nuova, stretched out her antennæ and wings dramatically, and spoke as with the voice of an oracle.
"Nuova is such a bee!" she exclaimed solemnly. "Nuova can be a Queen for us! She loves Hero. Do you, Nuova?" Nuova turned a rapt face up to Hero's.
"And Hero loves Nuova. Do you, Hero?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bee loving is not just liking and sighing and laughing and dancing and crying, and being always happy and unhappy at once, but it is becoming the mother of babies, many babies, and that only Princesses can become. And when they are the mothers of babies, they are Queens. In bee land to be a mother is to be a Queen, and to be a Queen is only to be a mother."
Nuova was silent. She felt compelled to believe Saggia, who surely knew about the life of bees if any one did, and who had always spoken truthfully to her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You must keep your eyes closed and your heart cold and loll and loaf through all your life until they tell you to go and love—love a Princess—love her, sight unseen—love her so hard that if you win her you kill yourself! You are not you; you are not a bee with a heart and brain and strong body of your own, to live and strive and suffer and succeed after your own way and your own desires, but you are a machine, an automaton, to do what custom has fashioned you to do! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then she grew serious and puzzled. "And Saggia and Beffa," she said. "Are we all new bees in this hive?"
Hero smiled. "Uno, Due, and Tre—" he said.
"Ugh! horrid bees," said Nuova with a grimace. "They would like to kill me."
"Beasts!" broke in Hero, "I'll kill them!" But then he remembered the fact that he had no lance nor by bee tradition could have any. "Absurd," he said in disgust. "What a world, where only the women may carry lances and fight and work, and the men are only loafers and lovers, and can only love by tradition, at that. Bah! I'd rather be even a human being. ”

“ 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? ”

“ While I was in the hive a little while ago a forager came in with two great loads of pollen in her pollen baskets. She was very tired and seemed sick. While she was looking around for an empty cell in which to put her pollen, she suddenly sank down—and—and died."
Nuova shivered as she said this, and dropped her antennæ down over her eyes for a moment.
"Ah, yes," said Saggia sadly but proudly; "worked herself to death. That is the noble death we have. We die in the harness—working for others, working for the hive. The bees know that death well and honor it." ”

“ These nurses were plainly intending to become foragers. Even as Saggia and Nuova watched them, one after another flew out higher and farther and disappeared into the garden.
It was a beautiful garden on the edge of which the hive was set. The owner of the garden was a great lover and student of flowers. He liked bees and beetles and birds, too; all kinds of live things, plant or animal. And no one was ever allowed to kill any creature, little or big, in his garden, so it was full to overflowing with life and animation. Birds made their nests in it; squirrels barked in the trees ”

“ Turning on their attackers, they renewed the battle with an irresistible surge toward Nuova, and reaching her and following her lead in but few moments more they had rushed the disheartened Black Bees off of the platform. They even followed them into the grass, where they killed many of them one by one. Then they hurried back with shouts of victory, and ranged themselves in lines for marching and dancing. While the foragers busied themselves with carrying the bodies of the fallen off of the platform, all the Amazons marched and danced and sang loud songs of triumph. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ It's a terrible thing to be a man bee. We have no rights at all!"
Nuova looked up at him wonderingly. "Why, the other drones seem to like to loaf," she said. "Anyway, they don't object."
"Don't object!" exclaimed Hero contemptuously. "They don't think; they don't feel! Each just does what the others do and all just do what drones have always done."
"But how else are we to know what to do," persisted Nuova, who had learned her lesson well from Saggia, "except by seeing what others do, and being told what the bees before us did?"
Hero was amazed and disconcerted to hear Nuova talk in this way. ”

“ But, of course, it is love for her, too; that is, so far as there is love at all among bees. We can love only Princesses, you know, we drones; that is honey-bee tradition."
Hero had seen no betrayal of Nuova's real feeling in her questions. He only saw in them the expression of her odd, independent way of looking at things and thinking about them. Nuova realized this and so became bolder by his blindness. And she was made bitter, too, by hearing this hero of hers repeat that always irritating phrase of "honey-bee tradition." ”

“ Just then two or three Black Bees slipped out from behind a bush near the platform, but no one noticed them.
"But why don't you go, then?" asked Hero. "It is beautiful over there among the flowers." He waved an antenna toward the garden. "And fragrant, and exciting. Other kinds of creatures; beetles and grasshoppers and big buzzing flies. Some bad ones, too; spiders and giant bee-birds always watching, watching to catch you." Nuova shuddered. "But you are not afraid, are you?" Hero looked at her keenly. "Or are you? Do you prefer to stay here in safety and just wait on the drones?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nuova smiled at Saggia's anticlimax. "No, I haven't scrubbed the floor yet. I suppose I ought to enjoy that a little before I die. But you see I am not really old enough to have had time for everything."
"That's it," broke in Saggia warmly. "You are not old enough yet. It is nonsense to talk of dying so young. You must live a long time yet. Look at me! Think how old I am!"
Nuova smiled again, but grew earnest as she spoke. "It is not how long you live, Saggia; it is how much you live. I have not done everything, but I have done most things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You have lived a long and useful life with much in it. I have lived a short and useless one; but also with much in it. You have lived mostly for others, and have been mostly happy. I have lived mostly for myself, and been mostly unhappy. But that is the way I am, Saggia. That is my way of living and really I suppose, my way of being happy; happily unhappy. And, Saggia"—and Nuova bent close over to her, as if to tell her a secret—"you know, don't you, that if I have missed cleaning floors, I have done something else in place of it ”

“ And when she spoke it was as if she were speaking in a dream. "I want to love and I cannot love! Only a Princess can love. And I am not a Princess. What can I do? Clean floors?" She turned to Saggia and smiled sadly. "No, I cannot clean floors, either," she said softly. "I am an unfortunate sort of bee, Saggia, a worthless sort. A new bee, but not new enough to love, and too new to clean floors. Just a bee to lie under the heliotrope bush."
Just then Beffa, who had come hopping and gently humming up to them unperceived by either, and who had overheard Nuova's last words, began to sing ”

“ 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. ”

“ And she made a little hop or two, in mimicry of Beffa.
Tre had been looking sharply at Saggia. "And Saggia doesn't seem to be doing much," she said, with asperity. "Foraging again, is she? That is rather a dangerous business for such an old bee, isn't it?" she said malevolently. "The two-legged man giant that owns this garden likes the two-legged bird giants. He is a brute! He protects the birds! And they eat the insects! He might protect us, rather. Brute!"
"Brute!" cried the other bees. "Protect the horrid birds, indeed! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly a loud, answering trumpeting was heard, and Beffa came hopping and humming to announce the approach of the old Queen. It was the Queen who was making the answering trumpeting. She came majestically along toward the cell of the Princess with a group of attendant bees about her. These attendants always kept circling slowly, but animatedly, about her, facing toward her, and although constantly shifting and changing places, always maintaining a complete circle around her. Every now and then she gave a loud trumpeting, and each time she was answered by a shrill piping from the cell. ”