“Ho, ho! You did, did you?” teased the doctor. “Some bee must have been buzzing around your ears, then. They’ll tell you most any kind of a tale to keep you from learning the truth about their secret. They’re so afraid someone will listen that they never sing the words of their honey song. They only hum it. And half of the hives don’t even know them. They come to my waterlily patch for the same thing the wasps do. A wasp once told me that the yellow dust you got on your nose when you went to smell for the honey was the best food in the world for growing youngsters.”
“That’s so,” agreed Stripes Skunk with his funny little three-cornered ears pricked right straight up. “I find it on their legs most every time I catch them. Just the same, I do taste honey in most every bee I eat.”
“Eat bees!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat, turning up his whiskery nose. “Eat bees? You’re as poor a story teller as Tad Coon.”
Of course Stripes had to scramble around and catch one. Tad ate one, too, and he solemnly insisted he could taste the honey as plain as plain.
“What does that prove?” argued the doctor. “If it proves anything it goes to show that honey is a sort of milk from a well-fed bee.”
“That’s so!” agreed Tad. “It’s certainly much more sensible than that old fairy tale about the flowers. I believe we’ve guessed their secret. Let’s get some more, Stripes, and make sure.”
So off they went. And back they came. Stripes had such a mouthful of honeycomb he couldn’t run, and Tad’s piece was so luscious and crumbly he had to carry it in both of his handy-paws and walk on his hind feet like a little bear. They laid it down on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, and just as they were about to gorge on it again, along came Nibble Rabbit, lippity-lippity, all out of breath.
“Hello, Nibble. You’re just in time to eat,” said Tad Coon.
“No, thanks,” gasped Nibble, shaking his floppy ears. “I guess I’ll take mine straight out of the clover blossoms, the way I always do.”
“From clover blossoms?” squealed Tad. “Do they have honey? Waterlillies don’t. We looked to see.”