“You have done me a great service,” she said. “I’ll repay you some time when you least expect it. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“Don’t try,” said Tiny, with a polite bow. “I’ve been taught to protect the helpless, provided they are not too big for my protection. I hope you are quite dry now.”
“Yes, I shall be able to fly back to the city as soon as I get my breath,” she said. “I am a queen bee and I should not be out of my hive. I left the palace this morning with several thousand followers and was on my way to a far-off country, when, in some peculiar manner, I fell into the water. I could not swim, so it is lucky for me that you came by.”
“I hope that your followers will find you. They must be greatly distressed.”
“Oh, I hope they’ll find me,” said the queen bee, as she flapped her wings. “You see, I have thousands and thousands of children; but they have good nurses and are never much bother. It is not hard to govern them.”
Tiny gazed at her in surprise.
“I have been queen of a place called the City Wonderful,” she continued. “I ruled fifty thousand subjects. We lived in a great city with narrow streets, protected by a beehive. You don’t know what a very busy place it was all summer long.”
“But it doesn’t seem possible that so many creatures could live together. Just imagine fifty thousand red squirrels in one tree!” gasped Tiny.
“That’s different,” responded the queen. “We live together in co-operation. Each of the workers knows her work and does it without having to be watched all the time. The workers are females, and they are very industrious; but the drones are males, and they do not work. They have to be driven out of the city before winter sets in, or they would eat all our provisions. The workers toil from morning till night, stopping up cracks in the hive with wax, carrying food to the baby bees, and storing it away for winter. They haven’t time to play in the summer. Each worker has six little pockets which she fills with pollen. She uses this in making wax for the walls. As soon as the walls are built, another set of workers make round places, or cells, in them. Others fill the cells with honey from the honey bags they carry about when they visit the flowers.”