And God went on to ask the bee what reward she would claim for the errand which she had so well fulfilled. The bee, impudent and greedy, replied: “Why should man share in my gift and have my honey? Give me the power to kill with my sting.”
And God was angry at the impudence of the bee, and replied: “All the honey shall be thine alone, if thou art able to make a gallon of it during the summer: if not, man may share it with thee. And because thou hast asked for the power of killing with thy sting, meaning to kill man by it, thine own death shall be by thy sting.”
This is the reason why the bees work so industriously and indefatigably during the summer. Each hopes to make a gallon of honey, but they can never succeed. And this, too, is the reason why the bee dies when it stings anyone.
There is another variant of the cosmogonic part.
The place of the devil is taken by the mole[1] whom the Rumanians believe to be a very deep fellow.
The story then runs as follows:
When God had made the heavens there was as yet no earth. So God took a ball of string and measured the span of heaven. Then he called the mole and told him to keep the ball whilst he was busy making the earth, according to the measure which he had taken. But whilst God went on measuring by the string which he had rolled off the ball, the mole very slyly let the ball roll on whilst God was tugging at the string. And so it came to pass that the earth made thus by God was larger than the span of heaven, and could not be got under it.
The mole, seeing what he had done, went away and hid himself in his earth. Hither the bee was sent to get the secret from him how the earth could be made smaller.
The story then runs on like the one just told, without the explanation of the dark colour and of the narrow waist. Nor is any reference made in that version to the sting and the gallon of honey.