Ruth’s eyes were big with questions. Miss Apis saw and continued:
“They did this by moving their wings rapidly as if they were flying, and when many did it at the same time the good air was driven around the hive and the bad air out. Then, of course, there had to be sentinels to speak to every bee who passed in, and make sure she had the right to enter, for human people are not our only robbers. There are flies that look much like us, but ask them to show their pollen baskets, and they can’t do it. Now it happened one Spring in the hive I am telling you about that the queen heard a sound that she didn’t like at all. It was a thin piping, and it came from one of the brood cells, which is the nursery of the hive.”
“‘It sounds like a young queen,’ she said, ‘but I have laid no queen eggs.’ The workers stopped their tasks long enough to talk about it. They knew perfectly well that it was a young queen, and they also knew how she happened to be there, even though the old queen had laid no eggs in the cells on the edge of the comb meant for queen eggs. The old queen did not wish another royal lady, but the workers knew that if anything happened to the old queen there would be none to take her place, and such a thing must not be allowed. So they had taken down two waxen walls between three small brood cells, where a worker egg lay, and so made it into a royal cell. They bit away the wax with their jaws, and pressed the rough edges into shape with their feet, and when the egg within hatched, instead of feeding the baby with flower dust and honey and water, as they would have done had they intended it to grow into a worker, they fed it royal jelly. And so after it had grown and spun a cocoon, within which it had lain for sixteen days, it had become a young queen, ready to leave her cell. But the workers knew it would never do for her to come out just yet, for she and the old queen would have to fight, and one would surely die.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” cried Ruth. “Why should they?”
“Because only one queen may reign in a hive.”
“‘We will keep her in her cell a little longer,’ the workers said to each other. And they built a wall of wax over her door, leaving only a hole large enough for her to thrust out her tongue so that they might feed her. But though she couldn’t get out, she could complain.”
“I should have complained too,” said Ruth.
“Well this young queen complained in earnest, and the old queen heard her, and of course she tried to get to the cell of this pert young one, and settle her for all time. This the workers would not allow. They would not touch their old queen, but they formed a bodyguard about the cell of the new one, and so protected her.”
“‘Well,’ said the old queen at last, ‘I can’t stand this. I will not stay here. I shall take my friends with me and fly away to a place where only I shall be queen.’”
“She grew more and more excited, as time passed, and, as many of the workers were excited too, the hive was in much confusion.”