Father Bear smiled as he called out: "No, no, not there. You're looking away too high. See, much lower," and he pointed to the place where the hole was.
"Oh, now I see it. I didn't look there. I thought you meant way up high," said Bobby Bear. "What makes the hole so black, father? And look, it's moving. Why, it's all flies."
"Now, my boy, I'll tell you all about the honey. Those little black things up there, of which there are so many, are not flies. They are bees. There are thousands of those bees swarming in and around that hole."
"Why, where do they all come from?" asked the little bear, "and what are they doing up there? And where's the honey? I don't see any honey."
"Wait a moment and I'll tell you," answered Father Bear. "That hole is the bees' home, just as the big cave is our house. And every night the bees come to the hole to sleep. But they have been at home many times in the day also.
"Haven't you ever seen the bees flying around the flowers? Perhaps you thought they were flies. Do you know what they were doing? They were getting honey from the flowers."
Bobby Bear was puzzled. "Honey from the flowers?" he repeated. "If the flowers have honey, why do we have to come all this way to get the honey? Why can't we go to the flowers the way the bee does and get all the honey we want?"
"If we did that, my boy," his father answered, "it would take us many years to fill even a small cup with honey. No, there are thousands and thousands of bees that come and go all day long and as they do nothing else, very soon they have a lot of honey all in one place. That is what we have come for today."
Leaving that great tree, they went and looked at many others. Some of the trees had big holes where bees buzzed around; most of them had no bees at all.
Bobby was getting impatient. "Why don't we get the honey, father? Why do we walk around all day?"