'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.
Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all brood-cells should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere with the grub or the workers. He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely due to the workers building against each other on opposite sides of the wall, and that if there were no interference, there would be no angles. Some bees tried the new plan for a while, and found it cost eight times more wax than the old six sided specification; and, as they never allowed a cluster to hang up and make wax in peace, real wax was scarce. However, they eked out their task with varnish stolen from new coffins at funerals, and it made them rather sick. Then they took to cadging round sugar-factories and breweries, because it was easiest to get their material from those places, and the mixture of glucose and beer naturally fermented in store and blew the store-cells out of shape, besides smelling abominably. Some of the sound bees warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities at once surrounded them and balled them to death. That was a punishment they were almost as fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound bees to feed them. Curiously enough the age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion towards the Hive made the sound bees do this, though their reason told them they ought to slip away and unite with some other healthy stock in the apiary.
'What, about seven and three-quarter minutes' work now?' said Melissa one day as she came in. 'I've been at it for five hours, and I've only half a load.'
'Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey which the Hive produces,' said a blind Oddity squatting in a store- cell.
'But honey is gathered from flowers outside two miles away sometimes,' cried Melissa.
'Pardon me,' said the blind thing, sucking hard. 'But this is the Hive, is it not?'
'It was. Worse luck, it is.'
'And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?' It opened a fresh store-cell to prove it.
'Ye-es, but it won't be long at this rate,' said Melissa.
'The rates have nothing to do with it. This Hive produces the Hival Honey. You people never seem to grasp the
