Part 19

“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!”

Crip and the Imposter]

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.