Once, indeed, he had thought it would be fun to help with the honey-making. So he stopped one of the workers when she was on her way home with a load of nectar.
"Let me help you carry that home!" Buster said.
Now, the workers were all a shrewish lot. They were terribly short-tempered—especially if anybody interfered with their work, which they loved better than anything else in the world.
"Don't you come near me!" snapped the worker angrily. "Keep away or I'll sting you!" she threatened.
Naturally, a happy, easy-going person like Buster Bumblebee wasn't looking for trouble of that sort. So he dodged clumsily out of sight behind a milkweed; and he made up his mind then that that was the last time he would ever have anything to do with one of those testy honey-makers.
Of course it was a bit difficult to avoid them entirely in a family of two hundred or more, all living together in a medium-sized house. And so Buster Bumblebee decided at last that he would be far happier in some place that was not so crowded, and where there was no work going on—and no workers.
And so, one fine August day, Buster left the family home, never to set foot inside it again. But he often passed that way and lingered just outside the door, to listen to the music and the sound of dancing within.
That was the thing that he missed most; for, like all his family, he was fond of music. And he was forever humming to himself as he sipped nectar from the clover-tops or the flowers in Farmer Green's garden.
