Chapter 12 | Busy Bees | Featherland

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine round-topped straw hives there were at Greenlawn—hives full of such rich, thick honey, and such beautiful combs, and all about these round heavy hives the bees would hum and buzz of a hot day, flying in and out loaded with honey and pollen; and outside some of the hives the bees would hang down like great pockets made of insects, all hanging to one another; and there they hung, getting ready to swarm and fly off to a new home; but they did not know how to choose one for themselves, for they would only fly off to a tree and hang there all of a lump, when the master of Greenlawn would take a nice, clean, sweet hive and sweep them all into it, and set them on a board by the side of the other hives. It was such a nice, sweet place, all amongst flowers, and the scent of the honey would come from the hives so strongly that very often the birds would come and think they would like a taste, while the wasps would even go so far as to creep in and steal some of the luscious food. As to flies, they would come without end, and if they had not been afraid of the bees they would soon have run off with all the sweet honey. But one day there was a very serious bluebottle who had sat upon the end of a sweet pea watching the bees so busy, while he had been doing nothing all day but make a noise, and he felt at last so ashamed of himself, that when he saw a bee come to the flower he was on, and put his long trunk into it to find whether there was any honey, he began to buzz very loudly; and the bee, looking up to know what he meant, heard him say—

“Little bee, buzzing about in the air,

For once be not busy, a moment pray spare,

And tell me, pray tell me, how honey you make

From the flowerets of garden, soft meadow, and brake.

You rise with the sun, and your gossamer wing

Bears you swiftly away where the heather-bells spring;

Whence you come heavy laden with nectary spoil,

For the sweet winter stores of your summer of toil.

 

“Oh! I would be busy; and lay up in store

For the days of the winter when cold showers pour,

And the wild wintry breezes sweep flowers away,

While the sun sets in gloom o’er the dim-shadowed day;

But I’m a poor bluebottle, spoken of ill;

Whilst you are protected, all bear me ill-will;

And if I escape from each murderous blow,

The first cutting frost lays the bluebottle low.

 

“So little bee buzzing, a lesson pray give;

Remember the motto to ‘live

and let live;’ For one moment teach me sweet honey to make,

That again in the spring-time with you I may wake.”

“Buzz,” said the bee, “that’s all very fine, but you were never meant to make honey. Go and do your duty, and lay eggs in the bad meat to make maggots to eat it up, so that we may not have the nasty stuff lying about. I daresay you think we have a very fine time of it amongst the honey; but, don’t you know, sometimes somebody comes with the brimstone and smothers us all, and takes the honey away? How should you like that, old blue-boy?”

“Worse and worse—wuz–z–z–ooz–wooz,” said the bluebottle, and off he flew, and never sang any more songs to the bees; while the old bee burst out laughing so heartily at the way in which the bluebottle was frightened, that he let all the bee-bread tumble out of his baskets, and before he could pick it up, a bee from another hive flew off with it.

“There,” said the first bee, “that comes of laughing at other people, and now I’ve got all my work to do over again; but, oh dear! how he did bustle off when I told him about the brimstone.”