Happy: The life of a bee

by Walter Flavius McCaleb

I answered nothing. I was wondering in what far age we had learned to build the six-sided cell, and in what tiny brain it had been conceived. They fit so perfectly, I stood quite still marveling at the harmony of it all and wondering how many things there remained for me to learn. At every turn I had been confronted with something new. And was it to be so to the end? What could the end be, of which Crip frequently spoke?

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Two months—glorious with flowers, but ending in disaster.”

“What disaster?”

“Well, you saw the close of it—the death of our colony.”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. But he was so wise I could scarcely believe that he was but two months old, for he seemed so tattered of wing and battered of body!

Without thinking what we were about, we drew near the door. Groups of workers were banked about the entrance, waiting impatiently to be away at the first streaks of dawn. Presently a note like a bugle-call sounded, and immediately the face of things was changed. By twos and threes and fours the workers took wing and scurried into the fields.

A dull gray light lay on the world; the air was damp and moved lazily out of the east; the dew had fallen thick on the flowers and now began to twinkle from myriad angles. Crip and I had left the hive at the same instant, but once on the wing I forgot all about him and flew like mad this way and that until I caught a whiff of fragrance from an unexplored meadow, and thither I hastened. Strange and thrilling sensation! I had not until now felt the joy of dipping into the flowers and searching out their honey-pots. It was a field of late sunflowers, and all of them had their faces toward the east, eager to look upon the sun. Joyfully they waved in the breeze and beckoned to one another as if to say: “Good morning. How glorious is the sun, our king!” In spite of the dew on their faces, some of them already were wearing the brand of the hot summer, which had all but gone and left them beseeching of autumn her tender graces.

“I am old and frayed,” I heard one say, “and these mornings chill me, but my work is done. The heart and soul of me are here; I shall not pass; I shall endure; my seed shall spring up to brighten the world.”