But what I started to tell about is something that happened between the neighboring bee-houses quite different from the troubles of the bees finding their way home. It was something that gave Mary and me the principal excitement that we had in all our many days of watching bees.
Mary and I do not want to say that the German bees knew that a third of Fuzzy's community had swarmed out and gone away. Though how they could help knowing it really seems more a puzzle, for there was excitement and buzzing and window-sill covered and air full of bees enough to have told everybody within a rod of what was going on in the Italian house. But it was true that Fuzzy's community had never been troubled at all seriously by the belligerent Germans, until after it had been much reduced in strength by the loss of one-third of its members. And then this trouble did come, and came soon. So it looks as if the Germans realized the weakness of their neighbors. But perhaps not.
Just as our other exciting time beginning with the piping of the new queen and lasting until the subsequent swarming was a discovery of Mary's, so with this new time of high excitement; high excitement I may say both on our part and the bees'. Mary was in the room where the bees are, although not at the moment watching them, when she heard a sound of violent buzzing and humming. It grew quickly louder and shriller, and in a moment both communities were in an uproar.
It was a battle, a great battle. On the one hand, a struggle by brutal invaders intent on sacking the home and pillaging the stores of a community given to ways of peace and just now reduced in numbers by a migration or exodus from home of a large group of restless spirits; on the other hand, a struggle for home and property and the lives of hundreds of babies by this weak and presumably timid and unwarlike people. A great band of Germans were at the door of Fuzzy's house trying to get in! They buzzed and pushed and ran their stings in and out of their bodies, and crowded the entryway full. But the Italian workers and guards had roused their community, and pouring out from the hive into the narrow entry was a stream of angry and brave amber bees, ready to fight to the death for their home.
It was really a terrific struggle. The Italians, few in numbers as a community, were yet enough to oppose on fairly equal terms the band of Germans, for by no means all the Germans had come from their house. And the Italians had the great advantage of being defenders. They had only to keep out the black column trying to force its way in through the narrow door and entry. And they were no laggards in battle. They fought with perfect courage and great energy. Often a small group of Italians would force its way out of the door and into the very midst of the Germans outside on the window-sill. These brave bees were all killed, overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the enemy. But not until they had left many dying Germans on the stone window-ledge were their own paralyzed and dying bodies hustled out of the way.
In many cases the combat took on the character of duels between single pairs of combatants. A German and an Italian would clasp each other with jaws and legs, and thus interlocked and whirling over and over with violent beating of their wings would stab at each other until one or both were mortally wounded. All the time the frenzied ball would be rolling nearer and nearer the outer edge of the treacherous sloping window-ledge, until finally over it would go, whirling in the air through the thirty feet of fall to the ground below. Here the struggle would go on, if the fighters were not too stunned by the fall, until one or both bees were dead or paralyzed.
It is really too painful to tell of this fight. And it was painful to watch. But the end came soon. And it was a glorious victory for Fuzzy and her companions. The German robbers flew back, what were left of them, to their own hive. Mary and I tried all through the fight to watch Fuzzy. But we saw her only once; she was in the entry then and nearly in the front row of fighters. We were glad to see her so brave, but fearful for her fate. After the fight we looked anxiously through the hive for our little white-spotted friend. We didn't see her, and were ready to mourn her for lost, when Mary happened to look out on the window-ledge where a few Italians were pushing the remaining paralyzed or dead Germans off. There was Fuzzy dragging, with much effort, a dead, black bee along the rough stone.
We were very happy, then, and wanted more than ever to be able to talk to our brave little champion and rejoice with her over the splendid victory. But we could only do as Fuzzy seemed to be doing. That is, take up again the work that lay at our hands. My work was to go into the lecture-room and talk to a class about the absence of intelligence and mind and spirit in the lower animals and the dependence of their behavior upon physics and chemistry and mechanics! Mary's work was to go out into the poppy-field and talk with the little grass people whom she never sees or hears, but knows are there.
