When the cold winds come, in the fall and winter, and the flowers are dead, the little workers stop their labor and gather together in the home they have been preparing all summer. When the snow comes, the little grass storehouse is buried snug and warm underneath the white blanket.
It was just such a nest as this that Coonie watched the boys robbing of its treasure. Poor little bees! All their hard work had been in vain, and they had even lost their little lives in the brave effort to protect their winter’s food supply.
But even from his hiding place Coonie could see that the boys had not won the battle without some losses. Big lumps were beginning to swell up on their faces and arms, and the little boy who had tripped and fallen could hardly see because his eyes were nearly swollen shut.
The boys tore away the mound and took out the honey, layer by layer, and squeezed out the golden syrup. Just as they were licking the last drops from their sticky fingers, Coonie saw a man walking towards them. When he was near enough, he began talking to them in an angry way.
“Why, Mr. Jones,” Coonie heard one boy say, “you don’t use bumble-bees’ honey, do you?”
“No, boys, I don’t use the honey myself, but I don’t want you to kill the bees or rob their nests so they will have to starve. Bees do a great deal of good on the farm.”
“What good are bumble-bees?” one of the boys asked.
“Why, they do a lot of good. They distribute the pollen from the heads of the clover, and that makes the seed mature and develop.”
This was news to Coonie, for he never knew before that bumble-bees were of any use, but then he had never had much to do with them. One day when he was playing he had caught a bee in his little paws and had received a sting, and he never forgot how sore his paws were and how they swelled so that he was unable to climb for several days. Since that time he had always made it a practice to move away when a bee came too close.
After the boys were gone and Farmer Jones had gone back to his house, Coonie decided that he would go over to the field and see what the inside of the bees’ nest looked like.