And immediately they all began calling out at once, and soon after began to fight with one another as hard as ever they could.
The bees would have liked to separate them, but the old head bee-nurse said to them,—
"Let them go on fighting; then we shall see which of them is the strongest, and we will choose her to be our queen. We can't do with more than one."
At this the bees formed round in a ring and looked on at the battle. It lasted a long time, and it was fiercely fought. Wings and legs which had been bitten off were flying about in the air, and after some time eight of the princesses lay dead upon the ground. The two last were still fighting. One of them had lost all her wings, and the other had only four legs left.
"She will be a poor sort of queen whichever of the two we get," said one of the bees. "We should have done better to have kept the old one."
But she might have spared herself the remark, for in the same moment the princesses gave each other such a stab with their stings that they both fell dead as a door-nail.
"That is a pretty business!" called the bees, and ran about among each other in dismay. "Now we have no queen! What shall we do? what shall we do?"
In despair they crawled about the hive, and did not know which way to turn. But the oldest and cleverest sat in a corner and held a council. For a long time they talked this way and that as to what they should decide on doing in their unhappy circumstances. But at last the head bee-nurse got a hearing, and said,—
"I can tell you how you can get out of the difficulty, if you will but follow my advice. I remember that the same misfortune happened to us in this hive a long time ago. I was then a grub myself. I lay in my cell, and distinctly heard what took place. All the princesses had killed one another, and the old queen had gone out into the world: it was just as it is now. But the bees took one of us grubs and laid her in one of the princesses' cells. They fed her every day with the finest and best honey in the whole hive; and when she was full-grown, she was a charming and good queen. I can clearly remember the whole affair, for I thought at the time that they might just as well have taken me. But we may do the same thing again. I propose that we act in the same way."