Part 6

We were still busy talking when the signal for work rang through the hive, and both Crip and I made our way to the front. And, as many times before, we rose from the board together and flew at once to the field of broomweed. Side by side we ranged, visiting many of the tiny yellow flowers ere we were laden. Everything was now painfully dry, and it was all too evident that the honey flow was over. Try as hard as we might, we gathered only a few loads a day. And Crip remarked how short the days were and how far into the south the sun had drifted. Then, besides, we were obliged to leave off earlier, on account of the cold.

“The leaves are all turning red and brown and yellow,” said Crip, as we flew homeward. “This is the melancholy time I’ve heard about. Even the wind seems sad and loiters around bush and tree as though he feared his caressing touch might hasten the down-dropping of the stricken leaves. Happy, I’m sad, too.”

I could only answer him that I of all bees was one of the most unhappy. And at the moment I was stricken with a feeling of homesickness, as though I, too, were bound on a journey toward the setting sun, or as though an unmeasured catastrophe impended.

As we neared home we saw the Master and his little Shadow seated by our hive, and near them, sprawling on the ground, the faithful dog. The Master was watching the incoming bees. Well he knew by the burdens they bore the condition of the fields.

“The workers are coming home very light,” remarked the Shadow. “Just a little bread.”

“The season is ended,” murmured the Master. “Soon they will go indoors and rest through the cold. We must come presently and take off the empty uppers, so as to concentrate the heat of the cluster. In that way they will conserve their stores. The cluster, you know, son, is formed by the bees covering over the brood and hanging on to one another so as to keep themselves and the young bees warm.”

Crip and I deposited our loads and then returned to the alighting-board, but the speakers had gone. We could hear the Master singing in his garden; and from a mesquite-tree hard by a mocking-bird answered him. All too soon he ceased; and the bird, after trilling a few wild refrains, as though to coax him to return, dropped into silence. For a time not a sound was heard, then the bird broke out again in a most plaintive song. He seemed to summon his phrases from the depths of despair.

Twilight had now quite engulfed the world. Crip, who had been for a time very still, began to stir restlessly.

“Happy, that is my passing song. How could the bird have known that this very night I shall cleave the air for the last time? Yes, I mean it. Please don’t interrupt me. The year has gone—I have done my work. I am a cripple, and my wings are tattered. I shall be a burden, eating the food that may be needed ere the harvest again is ripe. My time has come—and I must go into the dark. This is the law. Why should not bees fly away and never return? How much grander to pass away on the wing, hushed to sleep by the stars. How poor a thing it is to cling to the combs until death shall drag one down to the earth, there to embarrass one’s brothers.

“My work is done. My body is wrecked, and the golden call echoing from eternity is in my ears. I must go. You, Happy, have much to do ere your time shall come. But you will face life bravely.

“How can I thank you enough for having saved my life? Do you think I have done well? Have I worked faithfully? Hero, you say? No, not a hero; but I have tried to do the things that came to my hand; and that is all that one can do. That sums up the true meaning of life—service and duty done.

“Hear the bird! What a song for the night! Ah, but what music I shall hear soon when I fly out across the spaces of light! I am ready. I love you. Farewell—farewell.”

Crip had turned about for the last time, and was ready to go, when a heartrending cry woke the innermost caverns of the hive. He staggered a little, for he knew its meaning. I stood puzzled and amazed.

“What is it?” I begged of him.

“The worst of news—our Queen is dead!” he echoed.

“Let us go to her at once.”

In we went, and while I was shaken by the news which I did not fully comprehend, I was sobered and silent. I should probably have had no thought of death at all had I known what lay before us, the midnight ways we were to tread.

As we hurried in search of her, on all sides there was wailing: “Ai—ai—ai! Woe—woe—woe! Our Queen is dead!”

A spirit of dread and disaster filled the place and shook us mightily. Crip said never a word.

“I remember you told me once you had lost your Queen-Mother—that was the time I found you in the hive that we robbed. You were going to tell me about it.”

“Yes; but now it is too late—it is terrible. You do not understand—”

At length we came to where she lay asleep on the bottom-board of the house she had graced for so short a space. Around her surged her children, weeping for the queenly dead.

“She had been ill but a few days,” one said.

“She has not been well since the robbery,” added another.

“She was hurt in the fight,” put in a third.

“But she did not complain,” answered another.

Crip and I now in our turn came into the presence of the Queen lying prone on the floor, her wings draped about her. There were present none of the trappings of the dead, nor anything to show that she was not asleep, so peacefully she lay there. I came presently face to face with her, and once I had looked into her eyes I saw that the vision had vanished, that the spirit had gone.

I turned away sick at heart, wailing I know not what black hymn of despair. Crip, too, I had lost, and I feared he had gone on his long journey. I seemed to sink into a bottomless abyss.

Soon I had partially recovered my composure. The commotion which had swept the colony slowly subsided, although there still ran an undercurrent of anxiety. What should we do? That part of the intelligence of the bee which has to grapple with such emergencies had been active on the instant.

“The Queen is dead—long live the Queen,” was the low, reverential chorus.

“Three Queens have been ordained,” ran the cry.

Without knowing why, I hurried to the place which had been chosen for the wax-cell palaces—and there was Crip! He appeared to be the leader, and I was overjoyed to see him.

“You’ve found something more to do,” I said to him. “I’m so glad.”

“You see, I’m one of the oldest—”

“Don’t look so dejected,” Crip volunteered to those about him. “Hurry—hurry! Soon we shall have another Queen to reign over us.”

And now magic began to intervene—or miracle. Three cells with three tiny larvæ, two days old, were selected, and over these the great cell-palaces were erected. But more mysterious was the feeding of these tiny things, which under normal conditions would emerge workers. Think, then, of the transformation which will produce a Queen! Thanks to a secret buried in the heart of the bee, the worker, it is supposed, is converted, through feeding, into a Queen. Crip told me all this in his cheerful way; and he assumed so much importance in looking after the destinies of the three royal personages, that once or twice I was irritated at his conduct.

“Why three Queens?” I inquired, one day. “We need only one.”

“To make sure that _one_ will survive. The bee takes no chance where it can be avoided.”

The embryonic Queens grew rapidly, and in due season the doors of the palaces were sealed, not to be broken until her ladyship herself should choose to bite her way to the light.

The days were now being counted, even the hours, against the time when She would appear! Once more a little life was manifest in the hive. Workers went scouring the country for forage, and every bee found something to do, so happy were they in anticipation of the coming event.

The Master, too, had shown much interest in us. On one of the early days of our trouble, in passing, he had discovered our condition.

“They have lost their Queen,” he said to the little Shadow. “You can tell that by their movements. Everything is now in confusion. Let us see whether they have eggs or young larvæ available for the making of a Queen.”

With that he opened our hive and found the queen-cells.

“Here are cells already,” he commented, a gleam of satisfaction on his grave face.

“Let me see!” cried the Shadow, poking a little, curious face around a corner of the hive.

The Master knew at a glance the age of the Queens, for the cells had not been sealed; he knew that on such a day one would come forth amid the acclaim of a colony which had languished between hope and fear—life and death. So now, from day to day, with his little Shadow, he passed, pausing in front of the hive long enough to discover whether the great event had occurred.

It was on a day golden with a sun steeped in the waning glory of an Indian summer that the Queen emerged and took her throne. Crip and I had gone to the lake for a load of water, and we should probably not have missed the event had we not, out of curiosity, returned by the hollow tree which our brothers of the swarm had occupied. We flew up to the very entrance; the workers were filing past in a great stream, humming a note of content.

“They will survive,” I said to Crip. “The season has been a late one, and they must have gathered ample stores.”

We were in jubilant mood, on account of this discovery, which chimed in perfectly with conditions at home, for even before we alighted the sound of rejoicing reached us.

“A Queen has been born! A Queen! A Queen!”

We found a throng mad with rejoicings. Crip and I edged our way in, eager to pay our homage, thrilling at the thought that a new lease of life for the colony had been vouchsafed. We reached the place of the palace-cells, only to find them in ruins. Excited bees were razing the last buttresses, while echoing from all sides were: “A new mother has come! A Queen!” Presently two beautiful Queens were led to execution, for one had been crowned—and one only might rule the hive.

Order was restored, and things went normally until the nuptial day. In the life of the colony there is no equally vital event. Destiny waits on the mating of the Queen.

On a wonderfully fine, warm day, at the noon hour, she made ready for flight. Already in the air could be heard the roar of the drones, that groped about in search of the queenly presence. And now from the alighting-board she rose into the crystal blue. Crip and I, for no reason, followed, not near enough, however, to encroach on the sacred precincts. Higher and higher she climbed, now pursued by some scores of drones. Round and round in mazy flight they whirled until the heavens seemed dizzy, and the ultimate moment had arrived, when a yellow flash crossed the sky and fluttered in their midst—a bee-bird.

“Fly for your life!” a drone cried. “Fly—fly!”

A moment later it was all over, and a silent doomed procession dropped earthward—the Queen was missing—the bee-bird had caught her.

The news spread instantly. I had been among the first to make report of it.

“We shall all die together now,” said Crip, in dejection. “It is only a matter of days. We have no eggs, no larvæ, and may not rear another mother. Alas—alas!”

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.

I shook with an unrestrained emotion. “We are saved,” I thought.

“Where is our Queen? The Queen is gone!” they called.

A wild rush of bees set the hive in pandemonium. Finally one began to cry: “Here she is—she is dead.”

“Dead—dead!” rose loud over the place.

They were wailing over the lifeless body of the impostor, while I stood broken-hearted beside my Crip, who, at the sacrifice of his life, had redeemed that of the colony.

Two days later the Master came and opened the door of the cage, and the new Queen he had brought walked boldly out on the combs, to be wildly acclaimed, “Mother!” The hostility which had been displayed toward her had totally disappeared, and in its place had come affection. The death of the impostor had wrought a profound revolution, and everywhere my poor Crip was proclaimed a hero.

Within the space of an hour every egg and every young bee which the impostor had left was dragged out and cast to the ants; and almost at once the new Queen began to deposit eggs of her kind, and the hymn of rejoicing that welled up in that hive of many calamities cannot well be imagined. I think that I more than any other was moved to the bottom of my being.

It is not possible for me to express the loneliness which came over me at thought of Crip’s death. We had been such dear companions, and he had been so kind and wise.

When another day had dawned and the sun had sufficiently warmed the air, I went into the fields with the rest, but I seemed to wander as in a dream. All the while the desire possessed me to fly farther and farther away. Had I, too, lived out my period of usefulness? But Crip said that I had not, and I acted in this faith.

On my next excursion into the fields I felt a tremor in the air such as I remembered from another time, when the storm had broken. Black clouds, too, loomed on the horizon and little snake-like flames crawled in and out among them. This time I was not so eager to secure a load, and made off with all possible speed. Scarcely had I reached home when the rain began to fall in sheets and the thunder rattled frightfully. In a little while it was over; the sky was clear, but a dreadful wind from the north blew like a hurricane and it grew cold. By the next day it was so cold that we formed a cluster about the brood in order to keep it warm. We, too, were cold, and not a bee ventured from the hive.

Three days passed ere it was warm enough for us to look outside; and when I saw the world again, truly I was shocked. Everything was black and bare.

“The frost has fallen, not a flower remains alive,” mournfully exclaimed one of the nurses.

This was surely the winter of which I had heard so much. Happily, the Master came to our assistance by closing the door of our house, leaving but the smallest hole for our passage. This helped greatly in the matter of our keeping warm when the northers swooped upon us.

The season now alternated between moderately warm days and biting weeks of cold. On all days fit for flight, we sailed into the air for exercise and for the care of our bodies.

Close, close to one another we packed during the cold days and nights, and in this way generated enough heat to keep the hive warm and habitable. Life was monotonous. We were limited in our activities to caring for the brood and to policing the hive. There was little enough to do on the latter score, save on warm days. Then we searched out every nook and corner to see that the moth had not entered, for she was the mother of the web-worms, and I, for one, had the utmost respect for them. Sometimes harmless beetles were found, and, much as we hated to send them into the cold, we felt it must be done. Sometimes they went peacefully, but often enough we were compelled to drag them bodily forth—and occasionally we were forced to destroy them.

And so the days ran on. As for me, I employed them in meditation. What could be more conducive to reflection than the long, dark hours of quiet that reign in a winter-bound hive? Slowly, ever so slowly, I neared the end of my task.

And now I have come to the end. There remains only to tell what these last days held for me. Already the winter has gone and I am ready. Even as poor Buzz-Buzz, I feel that my labors are done. I am old and worn and need to make way for the young life which is already singing about me. The Queen-Mother, aware of conditions, has been scattering her brood over wide spaces, and already young bees, flapping their wings frantically, are stumbling over the combs, and hundreds more of them soon will be waiting for the signal to go into the fields. Eagerly will they try their first wings and eagerly will they gather from the flowers the pollen and honey that unfailingly come with the spring.

Even as I—even as a hundred thousand generations before me—will they marvel at the mysteries that surround them, but, undaunted and undismayed, they will fly into the face of the sun or struggle in the teeth of the hurricane! It is youth that knows no danger, that brooks no defeat, that pursues, that conquers. It is youth that constructs, that hopes, that achieves—youth that charges the heavens with glory!

Crip was right. Now age has torn my wings and rendered my body nearly useless. While I am still alive, I am among the dying—but, dying, I shall live again.

February has come and already the grass is green and the yellow catclaw-buds are bursting. The great tree that stands hard by is a-bloom. The alarm has been sounded, and out into the world the bees fly by tens and hundreds. I, too, cannot resist the call and rise into the air, driving toward a place I well remember. Sheltered from the north wind and exposed to the sun, a little slope lies dotted with daisies. In its midst a catclaw-tree sways like a golden ball in the breeze, and about it hum a score of bees. I, too, gather my load and wend my way homeward, but at heart I am weary. I had imagined that I alone knew of this particular spot. Alas! there are no secrets.

Flying out again, I took another course—one which led me over the Master’s cottage. There he was in his garden, pondering his roses. Round him I circled twice, thrice, until, perceiving me, he followed me with his eyes until I passed from his vision.

Then on I went to the place of the sunflowers, but where once had been beautiful blossoms the green grass waved in triumph.

It seemed to me that a never-ending night followed this excursion. I rested little or none; back and forth I raced from end to end of the hive, and from the entrance to my cell, which I had not forgotten. I passed and re-passed the Queen-Mother at her tasks, touching her reverently as one might touch the garment of a saint.

At length the gray light broke along the horizon and gleams of color pierced the low-lying clouds. My time had come. I felt the call, and there was no denying the command.

For a moment I seemed in a maze. Round and round I turned, like a child lost in the wilderness, then made straight for the entrance, where already a few of the hardier and younger workers were assembled, waiting for the light. How restless they seemed; how they longed to be off in the world; how alluring the unattained; how fascinating the great adventure of life!

* * * * *

As best I might, I have told my story, and here it must end. I have striven; I have dreamed; and as far as ever it comes to God’s creatures, I have been—HAPPY. Farewell!