Alice and Beatrice began crying out, for the bees were flying all about their grandmamma; but John was soon down from the ladder, and taking the board with the hive upon it very gently, he placed them carefully on a garden bench close by, and raising one side of the hive a little, as he had done with the first swarm, he left the bees, and they all stood at a little distance and watched them.
The bees still rose in great numbers high into the air, and whirled about in great confusion, and John began to fear that the queen bee was not in the hive; but by degrees they began to cluster round the hive and cover it. For it seemed that one or two had found out that the queen was safely housed in the strange-looking box, and had told the news to the others, for they came lower, flying closer and closer, and crept all over it until they had found the entrance, and before a quarter of an hour had passed, there was scarcely a bee to be seen out of the hive.
‘You can leave them safely now, I think, John, till the evening, and then I shall like these two swarms to be placed in the new bee-house. And now you know, dear Alice and Beatrice, that the Ayrshire hive is yours, and all the honey the bees make will be yours too.’
The little girls were much pleased, and thanked their grandmamma well. Afterwards they returned slowly through the hot garden to the verandah, and they were very glad of its cool shade.
Their grandmamma told them a great deal about bees: that this immense family, of often twenty thousand bees, was obedient to one single bee, a queen bee, who was their mother and their queen, for whom they worked and gathered stores of honey, and whom they protected from all harm. Grandmamma told them how busy and industrious the bees were, how early they were up in the summer, and how many times they flew out and returned ladened with honey or with pollen which they take from the flowers, what distances they fly in search of flowers, and it has been proved that they will fly even several miles to gather honey.
She described to the children how carefully they laid up a store for the winter; and said that it was cruel of people to kill the bees to get the honey, instead of being content to take only what the bees can spare, which is often a great deal.
‘I never kill my bees, you know, and I have plenty of honey—indeed, much more than I want.’
‘I can say, “How doth the little busy bee!”’ said Beatrice, and her grandmamma let her repeat the whole of the little hymn, which Beatrice did very nicely, and grandmamma said, ‘You will soon see through the little windows of your new hive “how skilfully she builds her cells.” I will let you read about the cells in a nice book called “Homes without Hands.”
‘There is another insect,’ grandmamma went on, ‘which is very industrious, and lays up a large store of food for the winter, and that is the ant. There is a very pretty fable in French about the ant and the grasshopper, which, when you are older, I should like you to learn.’
‘But will you tell us about it, grandmamma?’ asked Alice.