The girls then went to the side-porch to plan for Sue, but Janet could not sit still. She squirmed and hunched her shoulders in such a way that Natalie finally noticed it and cried:
“Good gracious, Janet! Why don’t you sit still?”
“Yes, Jan, what ails you? Are you nervous?” asked Norma.
“I don’t know what it is, girls, but I have never been in such misery. It must be prickly heat, I guess,” said Janet.
“Go upstairs and use talcum powder profusely,” suggested Belle, “before we start for Four Corners to see about the bees.”
Janet followed this advice and was comfortable for a short time after she rejoined the girls, but then the irritation of the skin began again and she wriggled worse than ever. All the way to Mrs. Tompkins’ house Janet said nothing but did a lot of acting.
Mrs. Tompkins showed her visitors her bee hives and gave them a great deal of useful information about the keeping of bees, then she said: “I’ve been looking for one of my hives to have a swarm every warm day we’ve had, lately, but they still keep on scolding and hanging around, so I imagine they are waiting for a sultry day which will foretell a good electrical storm. You know, bees like to swarm just before a thunder shower?”
The girls did not know this and were curious to know why it was, and Mrs. Tompkins replied that she figured it out her own way, but she had never heard the scientific reason for it.
“I watch the queen-bee and see how clever she is in her plans and movements, then I watch her train the tiny princess bees until they are large enough to start housekeeping for themselves, then I watch and see the queen-bee make her selections from all the workers and drones in the family, and she inspires them with a keen desire to move out of the old hive and find a new home. As the queen bee is the monarch in the hive, they follow and do exactly as she orders them to. She is constantly surrounded by loving guardians and it is impossible for her to ever fly away alone, or have any privacy.
“But she is a wise bee and knows that her workers hate a thunderstorm. A bee seldom flies far from home when rain or an electrical storm is threatened. So the queen bides her time, and when she can foretell a thunder storm hovering near, she starts the swarm going.