CHAPTER IV

_Nuova sees Some Other Things Done_

Just as Nuova took her place again, however, she heard in the distance a joyful singing. It came from the lightest place in the hive, and looking in this direction Nuova saw a whole group of nectar gatherers coming along together, half-dancing and turning about, and all singing together in the happiest way possible. This is what they sang:

Take a peep into the pail, Nectar to the brim, Carried over down and dale Till the ways were dim.

On a dawn-ray forth we sped, A thousand wings in tune, By a new-born wind were led Down the paths of June.

Silvery world of buzz and whirr, Fragrance on the wing, Sod and root and blade astir, Sped our garnering.

Long in Nature's honey-room We dipped and drank at will; Brushed the purple lilac plume, Sipped from thyme and dill.

Till when evening softly bore Over dune and dell, Hastened we with golden store Home to Queen and cell.

And then she heard another song, and saw a group of pollen gatherers following the nectar gatherers. And this is what they sang:

Here's saffron dust and crimson dust, And dust of rarest blue; In lavish Nature's pollen mines Each mines his favorite hue.

Some buzzed and burrowed all the morn Within a clover hold, Till fuzzy backs were powdered fine And thigh-bags bulged with gold.

And some delved deep in lily cups, Or hung from blossomy bells-- The story of their mazy flight The rainbow treasure tells.

There's pollen sweet for roof and wall, And more for soft bee-bread; For all, from wondrous Mother-Queen To bee-mite, must be fed.

Here's palest pink and lilac dust, And green and brown and blue; In lavish Nature's pollen fields Each finds his favorite hue.

They liked their work, these foragers, that was sure, and Nuova felt that she would like that kind of work too. Just then Mela, one of the pollen gatherers, climbing up the comb where Nuova was, with her pollen baskets filled by two great masses of golden yellow pollen, stopped for a moment for breath. Nuova stretched her antenna toward Mela and touched her, attracting her attention.

"Oh, Mela, tell me about it," she said to her eagerly. "Do you hear the birds sing and see the butterflies dance out there? Mela, take me with you when you go back."

Mela was very much astonished to hear a pretty young nurse bee talk to her this way, and she looked first sharply and then rather contemptuously at Nuova.

"You upstart young thing," she said, "take you out with us? Well, I rather think not until you have finished your nursing work. And you are loafing now! Well, you will do your work better in the hive or you can never go out at all, that's sure."

And Uno, Due, and Tre, who had overheard this conversation, buzzed at her one after another: "Lazy! Loafer! Shirk!" and they tried to strike her once more, but Saggia, who had not yet gone down to the floor, again kept them off and whispered rapidly to Nuova:

"Yes, you shall go out some time. But you must be a good bee and do your work in the hive first, nurse the babies, then help make wax and build cells. So go on with your work now. Hurry, the soldiers are coming, and they have their stings all ready for loafing bees as well as for wasps and black bees that come to rob us. Hurry, hurry!"

Saggia pushed Nuova back into her place, and Uno, Due, and Tre also hurried to their own places as the marching song of the Amazons was heard. Into the hive and down the long aisles between the great vertical walls of comb they came marching rapidly and brandishing their long, sharp lances all ready for use. This was their song:

Now fierce black bee and yellow wasp With cunning seek to rush the hive; Up warriors, aim the poisoned dart, Let no bold hornet pass alive!

Defenders of the golden stores, Swoop down upon the robber band, No foe escapes the Amazon spears, For Hive and Queen we make our stand!

As they finished their song the files of the Amazons broke up and the soldiers scattered themselves through the hive, although most of them kept in the lighter part near the entrance.

In the special quiet that followed the cessation of the song Nuova heard a voice calling loudly from a group of bees near the wax-making festoon at the unfinished end of the comb. This group was busily engaged in moulding new cells, using the wax which was being made by the bees in the living festoon.

"Look here," called the voice, which was that of Cera, chief of the cell-builders and wax-makers, "we must have more wax-makers." She waved an antenna toward the festoon. "They can't furnish us wax fast enough. Some of you older nurses come here."

Nuova who had stopped working and stepped a little out from the group of nurses at Cera's first words, now started quickly to go over to her. Uno, Due, and Tre all called angrily to her and tried to stop her but Nuova easily evaded them and hurried over, with several other nurses following, to Cera.

"Let me make wax," she said eagerly to Cera.

Cera looked at her, then away and to the others. "You! No, you are too young," she said. Then more loudly to the others: "More wax-makers, I say, and right away."

But Nuova insisted. "Take me," she urged. "Teach me to make wax."

Cera stared at her. "What a funny bee! Teach you! That shows you are not old enough. If you were you would know without any teaching. Bees don't have to be taught. They simply know how to do everything they need to when the right time comes for doing it. And if they don't know it is because the right time hasn't come."

But Nuova still stood squarely in front of her. Cera stared at her more and more surprised and more and more angry. "Here," she said finally, and very roughly, "keep out of the way. Go back to your babies."

Nuova fluttered her wings angrily and her sensitive antennæ trembled. "I won't," she said. "I won't be nurse any more; I'll make wax or go out for pollen. Yes, I'll go out into the garden."

Then she actually started to run toward the hive entrance, but was promptly stopped by Saggia, who had noticed her altercation with Cera and had hurried over.

Cera who had only half heard Nuova's angry outburst was nevertheless greatly astonished, and was about to make an indignant reply and to call the attention of the other bees to the audacious little rebel, but the candidates to make wax crowded about her so closely and chattered so distractingly to her that all thought of Nuova was, fortunately, immediately driven out of her mind.

In the meantime Nuova was tugging away from Saggia, and had even dragged her a little along toward the entrance. But Saggia held fast to one wing, and at the same time talked to her rapidly.

"Nuova, stop!" she said in a low voice, at the same time glancing back to see if the crowd around Cera was noticing them. "You mustn't say such things. Bees never do. Listen, you can make wax. Listen to me, I'll tell you what to do."

Nuova stopped tugging at the poor old bee, who was getting rather breathless and could hardly go on with her speaking. What she had last said, however, made Nuova want to hear more.

So as Nuova stopped pulling away Saggia went on talking. "The first thing the wax-makers do is to go to the pantry cells and eat all the honey and pollen they can. Then they all crowd together in close rows like that," pointing to the festoon of wax-makers, "so as to get very warm, and pretty soon the wax begins to come. It comes out in little drops on your wax-plates"--touching one of the ten curious little five-sided plates on the under side of Nuova's body--"and hardens right away into a thin sheet of wax on each one of the plates. Now all you have to do is to keep quiet and just mix with the others when they go to the food cells to eat and drink. Say nothing to any one, and nobody will pay any attention to you, not even Cera, as long as you are busy. There, see, they are going," she added, as the group around Cera began to break up, some of the bees going back to the babies while others, who had been accepted by Cera, moved to the open food cells and began eating pollen greedily and taking long drinks of honey.

"Slip over among them," said Saggia in a whisper, "and stuff yourself. Then go when they do to the festoon and hang on to it."

Nuova was so eager to try this new experience that she hardly paused to thank Saggia, although she did let a grateful smile flit over her pretty fresh face as she hurried away.

Just as she reached the food cells she heard a gentle, rather monotonous singing, and glancing in the direction of the group of cell-builders and wax-makers from which it came she saw that under the direction of Cera who had already rejoined her workers, the cell-builders were going through a sort of dance or rhythmic gymnastics, moving their bodies and waving their wings and legs in a sort of exaggerated imitation of moulding and building, and that the wax-makers in the festoon were buzzing their wings to make their bodies warmer and swinging back and forth, and that all of them together were singing a pretty song about their work. This is the song they sang:

Cling close in living curtain, One thousand swing as one, Now ooze the amber jellies-- The work has just begun.

Haste, mould the dainty wax flakes And ply the trowels swift; Pat, pat--the floors spread wider; Tap, tap--the light walls lift.

Through all the long hive-twilight, The patterned cell draw true;-- Tap, tap, with tiny trowel, We've neither nail nor screw.

Ten thousand honey pantries And rooms for pollen store;-- Build high the whole bee-city, And still there's need of more.

As the song and motion dance ceased, Cera called loudly again. This time she wanted cleaners to come. "Here," she cried. "Cleaners! Let a cleaner come. We are getting too much dust on the floor. Cleaners! Cleaners!"

But no one came. Cera, looking impatiently about, saw Nuova glancing up from the food cell over which she was standing, and motioned to her. "Here, you," she said, without seeming to remember that it was with Nuova that she had just had a dispute, "you don't seem to be doing much. You run down to those cleaners," pointing to several cleaners on the floor near the great pear-shaped cell, "and tell one to come here right away. Look lively, now."

Nuova, who seemed always ready for a new thing, gladly ran down the comb to the floor and danced happily across it to a bee that was busily cleaning and touched her with her antennæ. As the cleaner looked up Nuova said: "Cera wants you; they are making too much dust over there."

The cleaner straightened up a little and without a word shuffled slowly across to a place just under the festoon and began to clean the floor there. Nuova started to follow her, rather dawdling along, for the prospect of hanging motionless in a wax-making festoon was not especially attractive to her, when she was startled by the falling at her feet of a lump of something soft and sticky-looking. She looked up and saw far up on the vertical wall of the comb rising above her a bee peering down at her and the lump. This bee was indeed right up by the roof of the hive. As the bee saw Nuova look up she called to her loudly and rather gruffly, "I say, pretty young bee, bring me up that lump of propolis, won't you?"

Nuova picked up the soft brownish ball in her mouth and climbed quickly up to the top of the comb with it. As she offered it to the waiting bee on the ceiling, she found it sticking to her teeth in a very uncomfortable way.

"Oh, the sticky stuff," she said in disgust, "and how it tastes and smells!"

The bee to whom she was awkwardly trying to give it, whose name was Fessa, and who was a crack-filler, replied disgustedly and wonderingly: "Oh, the stupid bee. And it smells like what it is. And that's propolis. And when you've worked with it day and night for a week, as you will sometime, you will learn how to handle it, and not be sickened by its smell. It has really a good healthy smell, for it comes from beautiful great pine trees and balsam firs."

"Oh," cried Nuova, "from outdoors? From the garden where the flowers and butterflies are? Shan't I go out and get you some?" And she turned as if to start right away.

Fessa was much astonished, and as she was an irritable bee, she was angry too. "What?" she cried. "Well, you really are a stupid bee. Go out? You--you silly young thing. Don't you know you can't go out until it is time for you to go? And then you'll have to go whether you want to or not. Don't you know that bees do things according to custom? You don't do what you like: you like what you do. That's the bee way, you stupid. What kind of bee are you, anyway? Here now, hand over that stuff, and go back to your work." And Fessa took the last of the propolis from her very roughly.

Nuova, who did not like to be handled so roughly, and talked to so sharply, was almost in tears. She seemed to be always getting reproved. However, she said rather maliciously to Fessa: "Well, do you like to work with that sticky stuff? What do you do with it, anyway?"

But Fessa had already turned back to her work and paid no attention to her. In fact she had already begun, with her two or three other crack-filling companions, to sing a slow, "sticky" sort of song, as they kept stuffing propolis into a crack in the roof. Although I cannot give you the strange, monotonous melody of the song, I can give you the words. They were these:

We're the soft putty crew, Dripping the oozy glue, Squeezing our resins through Cranny and crack.

Stuffing with pure cement Crevice and chink and rent, Where creeping airs have sent Warning of Bee Moth bent On sly attack.

Yes, we are the safety crew, Spreading with trowel true Fragrant and golden glue, Gumming each crack.