I did not immediately answer, because I was at a loss for a reply and seemed still to be clinging to the edge of things. Such wonderful vistas had been opened to me, I suppose I acted like one entranced.
“I don’t know,” I answered at last.
“Wake up a bit, then.”
Again I seemed quite alone, although all around me hundreds of my brothers were sleeping, or working at their manifold tasks.
It was still very dark, but I began to move about drowsily, giving no heed to the way. From comb to comb I clambered, passing over unexplored regions. Presently I came to what was clearly the outermost comb. I saw a lot of workers tugging and pulling at the cells. I stopped and watched them. Each cell had its bee or bees busily engaged upon it. They would seize the sides of it with their sharp mandibles, and, by dint of biting and drawing, extend it little by little. I could see that it was a laborious process, this building of comb. I was standing quite still, looking on and meditating, when, without ceremony, one of the comb-builders rushed up to me and began to touch my body, then left as suddenly as he had come. Instantly I was inclined to resent this treatment, and called to him as he turned:
“What is all this about?”
He did not stop to answer, and I was left to discover that he had mistaken me for a comb-grower. Just what that meant I was soon brought to understand.
Hours passed and still I hung around the comb-builders, until I felt that I had mastered the secret of the art. Then slowly I turned and made my way back to my home cell, tired, but greatly pleased with my experiences.
I suppose I must have slept, for with startling suddenness it dawned on me that the night had passed. The faintest light was coming into our hive, and over the whole colony there was ringing the early summons to the field. The cry caught me and unconsciously I moved forward with the workers, a solid stream of them making way to the entrance. I, too, passed out, and once more—now the full dawn upon me—stopped upon the alighting-board and flapped my wings, essaying flight, only to find that I could not lift myself.
I was distressed and sick at heart. I wanted to go—I knew not where; but instead, there I was, an obstruction; and I could not immediately re-enter the hive on account of the outward press of workers. The growing light, and then the sudden burst of the sun, quite fascinated me. Besides this, the flight of a thousand of my brothers, each taking the note of the field-worker when about to embark, filled me with longing to go into the wide world that spread around and that called me with infinitely tender phrases.