Selected Stories (77 page)

If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the fanners worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.

A young bee crawled up the greasy, trampled alighting-board. ‘Excuse me,' she began, ‘but it's my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if this is my –'

‘– own hive?' the Guard snapped. ‘Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to you! Next!'

‘Shame!' cried half-a-dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum.

The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been slanged by the Guard.

‘What is the world like, Melissa?'
²
said a companion.

‘Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be foul-brooded!' She sat down in the cool draught across the combs.

‘If you'd only heard,' said the Wax-moth silkily, ‘the insolence of the Guard's tone when she cursed our sister! It aroused the Entire Community.' She laid an egg. She had stolen in for that purpose.

‘There
was
a bit of a fuss on the Gate,' Melissa chuckled. ‘You were there, Miss –?' She did not know how to address the slim stranger.

‘Don't call me “Miss”. I'm a sister to all in affliction – just a working-sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden.' The Wax-moth caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid another egg.

‘You mustn't lay here,' cried Melissa. ‘You aren't a Queen.'

‘My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour those aren't eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to die for them.' She raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp round her. ‘If you'd like to kill me, pray do.'

‘Don't be unkind, Melissa,' said a young bee, impressed by the chaste folds of the Wax-moth's wing, which hid her ceaseless egg-dropping.

‘
I
haven't done anything,' Melissa answered. ‘She's doing it all.'

‘Ah, don't let your conscience reproach you later, but when you've killed me, write me, at least, as one that loved her fellow-workers.'

Laying at every sob, the Wax-moth backed into a crowd of young bees, and left Melissa bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her little voice in the darkness and cried, ‘Stores!' till a gang of cell-fillers hailed her, and she left her load with them.

‘I'm afraid I foul-brooded you just now,' said a voice over her shoulder. ‘I'd been on the Gate for three hours, and one would foul-brood the Queen herself after that. No offence meant.'

‘None taken,' Melissa answered cheerily. ‘I shall be on guard myself, some day. What's next to do?'

‘There's a rumour of Death's Head Moths about. Send a gang of youngsters to the Gate, and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of stout scrap-wax pillars. It'll make the Hive hot, but we can't have Death's Headers in the middle of our honey-flow.'

‘My Only Wings! I should think not!' Melissa had all a sound bee's hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking, feathery Thief of the Hives. ‘Tumble out!' she called across the youngsters' quarters. ‘All you who aren't feeding babies, show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the Ga-ate!' She chanted the order at length.

‘That's nonsense,' a downy, day-old bee answered. ‘In the first place, I never heard of a Death's Header coming into a hive. People don't
do
such things. In the second, building pillars to keep 'em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British bees. In the third, if you trust a Death's Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of confidence. Our dear sister in grey says so.'

‘Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax that is needed for higher and more practical ends,' said the Wax-moth from an empty store-cell.

‘The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I've ever heard of. You mustn't teach us to refuse work,' Melissa began.

‘You misunderstand me as usual, love. Work's the essence of life; but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour against imaginary danger,
that
is heartbreakingly absurd! If I can only teach a – a little toleration – a little ordinary kindness here towards that absurd old bogey you call the Death's Header, I shan't have lived in vain.'

‘She
hasn't
lived in vain, the darling!' cried twenty bees together. ‘You
should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to spreading her principles, and – and – she looks lovely!'

An old, baldish bee came up the comb.

‘Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!' she said. The Wax-moth slipped aside.

The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering.

‘What's the matter with 'em?' said the oldster. ‘Why do they call each other “ducky” and “darling”. Must be the weather.' She sniffed suspiciously. ‘Horrid stuffy smell here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never thought to report her presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths to be like blood-red dragon-flies.

‘You had better fan out this corner for a little,' said the old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her fore-feet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke – three hundred beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee's temper, because she must always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows it. The Wax-moth crept forth, and caressed Melissa again.

‘I see,' she murmured, ‘that at heart you are one of Us.'

‘I work with the Hive,' Melissa answered briefly.

‘It's the same thing. We and the Hive are one.'

‘Then why are your feelers different from ours? Don't cuddle so.'

‘Don't be provincial,
carissima
.
³
You can't have all the world alike – yet.'

‘But why do you lay eggs?' Melissa insisted. ‘You lay 'em like a Queen – only you drop them in patches all over the place. I've watched you.'

‘Ah, Brighteyes, so you've pierced my little subterfuge? Yes, they are eggs. By and by they'll spread our principles. Aren't you glad?'

‘You gave me your most solemn word of honour that they were not eggs.'

‘That was my little subterfuge, dearest – for the sake of the Cause. Now I must reach the young.' The Wax-moth tripped towards the fourth brood-frame where the young bees were busy feeding the babies.

It takes some time for a sound bee to realize a malignant and continuous lie. ‘She's very sweet and feathery,' was all that Melissa thought, ‘but her talk sounds like ivy honey tastes. I'd better get to my field-work again.'

She found the Gate in a sulky uproar. The youngsters told off to the pillars had refused to chew scrap-wax because it made their jaws ache, and were clamouring for virgin stuff.

‘Anything to finish the job!' said the badgered Guards. ‘Hang up, some of you, and make wax for these slack-jawed sisters.'

Before a bee can make wax she must fill herself with honey. Then she climbs to safe foothold and hangs, while other gorged bees hang on to her in a cluster. There they wait in silence till the wax comes. The scales are either taken out of the maker's pockets by the workers, or tinkle down on the workers while they wait. The workers chew them (they are useless unchewed) into the all-supporting, all-embracing Wax of the Hive.

But now, no sooner was the wax cluster in position than the workers below broke out again.

‘Come down!' they cried. ‘Come down and work! Come on, you Levantine parasites! Don't think to enjoy yourselves up there while we're sweating down here!'

The cluster shivered, as from hooked fore-foot to hooked hind-foot it telegraphed uneasiness. At last a worker sprang up, grabbed the lowest wax-maker, and swung, kicking, above her companions.

‘I can make wax too!' she bawled. ‘Give me a full gorge and I'll make tons of it.'

‘Make it, then,' said the bee she had grappled. The spoken word snapped the current through the cluster. It shook and glistened like a cat's fur in the dark. ‘Unhook!' it murmured. ‘No wax for anyone today.'

‘You lazy thieves! Hang up at once and produce our wax,' said the bees below.

‘Impossible! The sweat's gone. To make your wax we must have stillness, warmth, and food. Unhook! Unhook!'

They broke up as they murmured, and disappeared among the other bees, from whom, of course, they were undistinguishable.

‘'Seems as if we'd have to chew scrap-wax for these pillars, after all,' said a worker.

‘Not by a whole comb,' cried the young bee who had broken the cluster. ‘Listen here! I've studied the question more than twenty minutes. It's as simple as falling off a daisy. You've heard of Cheshire, Root and Langstroth?'

They had not, but they shouted ‘Good old Langstroth!' just the same.

‘Those three know all that there is to be known about making hives. One or t'other of 'em must have made ours, and if they've made it,
they're bound to look after it. Ours is a “Guaranteed Patent Hive”. You can see it on the label behind.'

‘Good old guarantee! Hurrah for the label behind!' roared the bees.

‘Well, such being the case,
I
say that when we find they've betrayed us, we can exact from them a terrible vengeance.'

‘Good old vengeance! Good old Root! 'Nuff said! Chuck it!' The crowd cheered and broke away as Melissa dived through.

‘D'you know where Langstroth, Root and Cheshire live if you happen to want 'em?' she asked of the proud and panting orator.

‘Gum me if I know they ever lived at all! But aren't they beautiful names to buzz about? Did you see how it worked up the sisterhood?'

‘Yes, but it didn't defend the Gate,' she replied.

‘Ah, perhaps that's true, but think how delicate
my
position is, sister. I've a magnificent appetite, and I don't like working. It's bad for the mind. My instinct tells me that I can act as a restraining influence on others. They would have been worse, but for me.'

But Melissa had already risen clear, and was heading for a breadth of virgin white clover, which to an overtired bee is as soothing as plain knitting to a woman.

‘I think I'll take this load to the nurseries,' she said, when she had finished. ‘It was always quiet there in my day,' and she topped off with two little pats of pollen for the babies.

She was met on the fourth brood-comb by a rush of excited sisters all buzzing together.

‘One at a time! Let me put down my load. Now, what is it, Sacharissa?' she said.

‘Grey Sister – that fluffy one, I mean – she came and said we ought to be out in the sunshine gathering honey, because life was short. She said any old bee could attend to our babies, and some day old bees would. That isn't true, Melissa, is it? No old bees can take us away from our babies, can they?'

‘Of course not. You feed the babies while your heads are soft. When your heads harden, you go on to field-work. Anyone knows that.'

‘We told her so! We
told
her so; but she only waved her feelers, and said we could all lay eggs like Queens if we chose. And I'm afraid lots of the weaker sisters believe her, and are trying to do it.
So
unsettling!'

Sacharissa sped to a sealed worker-cell whose lid pulsated, as the bee within began to cut its way out.

‘Come along, precious!' she murmured, and thinned the frail top from the other side. A pale, damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly on to the comb. Sacharissa's note changed at once. ‘No time to waste! Go
up the frame and preen yourself!' she said. ‘Report for nursing-duty in my ward tomorrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What's the matter with your third right leg?'

The young bee held it out in silence – unmistakably a drone leg incapable of packing pollen.

‘Thank you. You needn't report till the day after tomorrow.' 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 albinos 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.