"Thank you. You needn't report till the day after to-morrow."Sacharissa turned to her companion. "That's the fifth oddity hatched in my ward since noon. I don't like it.""There's always a certain number of 'em," said Melissa. "You can't stop a few working sisters from laying, now and then, when they overfeed themselves. They only raise dwarf drones."But we're hatching out drones with workers' stomachs; workers with drones' stomachs; and albinoes and mixed-leggers who can't pack pollen--like that poor little beast yonder. I don't mind dwarf drones any more than you do (they all die in July), but this steady hatch of oddities frightens me, Melissa!""How narrow of you! They are all so delightfully clever and unusual and interesting," piped the Wax-moth from a crack above them. "Come here, you dear, downy duck, and tell us all about your feelings.""I wish she'd go!" Sacharissa lowered her voice. "She meets these--er -oddities as they dry out, and cuddles 'em in corners.""I suppose the truth is that we're over-stocked and too well fed to swarm," said Melissa.
"That is the truth," said the Queen's voice behind them. They had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating. Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body forward. "Can you suggest a remedy?" she said.
"New principles!" cried the Wax-moth from her crevice. "We'll apply them quietly later.""Suppose we sent out a swarm?" Melissa suggested. "It's a little late, but it might ease us off.""It would save us, but--I know the Hive! You shall see for yourself." The old Queen cried the Swarming Cry, which to a bee of good blood should be what the trumpet was to Job's war-horse.
In spite of her immense age (three, years), it rang between the canon-like frames as a pibroch rings in a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and repeated it up in every gallery;and the broad-winged drones, burly and eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: "La Reine le veult! Swarm!
Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!"
But the roar which should follow the Call was wanting. They heard a broken grumble like the murmur of a falling tide.
"Swarm? What for? Catch me leaving a good bar-frame Hive, with fixed foundations, for a rotten, old oak out in the open where it may rain any minute! We're all right! It's a 'Patent Guaranteed Hive.' Why do they want to turn us out? Swarming be gummed!
Swarming was invented to cheat a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed!"The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for the night.
"You hear?" said the Queen. "I know the Hive!""Quite between ourselves, I taught them that," cried the Wax-moth. "Wait till my principles develop, and you'll see the light from a new quarter.""You speak truth for once," the Queen said suddenly, for she recognized the Wax-moth. "That Light will break into the top of the Hive. A Hot Smoke will follow it, and your children will not be able to hide in any crevice.""Is it possible?" Melissa whispered. "I-we have sometimes heard a legend like it.""It is no legend," the old Queen answered. "I had it from my mother, and she had it from hers. After the Wax-moth has grown strong, a Shadow will fall across the gate; a Voice will speak from behind a Veil; there will be Light, and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in one great fire." The old Queen was trying to tell what she had been told of the Bee Master's dealings with an infected hive in the apiary, two or three seasons ago; and, of course, from her point of view the affair was as important as the Day of Judgment.
"And then?" asked horrified Sacharissa.
"Then, I have heard that a little light will burn in a great darkness, and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I think not.""Tut! Tut!" the Wax-moth cried. "You good, fat people always prophesy ruin if things don't go exactly your way. But I grant you there will be changes."There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars. Flannelly lines ran through the honey-stores, the pollen-larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, through the babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards spent half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb. The caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. Even where it did not hamper the bees' feet, the stale, sour smell of the stuff put them off their work; though some of the bees who had taken to egg laying said it encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital interest in life.
When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the ever-increasing Oddities--albinoes, mixed-leggers, single-eyed composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying sisters; and the ever-dwindling band of the old stock worked themselves bald and fray-winged to feed their queer charges. Most of the Oddities would not, and many, on account of their malformations, could not, go through a day's field-work; but the Wax-moths, who were always busy on the brood-comb, found pleasant home occupations for them. One albino, for instance, divided the number of pounds of honey in stock by the number of bees in the Hive, and proved that if every bee only gathered honey for seven and three quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating flights. The drones were not at all pleased.
