“Run, son, and bring me that Italian Queen in the new cage.”
In a few minutes the cry of a Queen rang through the hive. Crip and I flew toward it, and presently paused beside the trap which contained a most beautiful Queen. But she was not our Queen, and now a riot was started. “Kill her—kill her!” broke on all sides. While Crip and I took no part, we entered no protest—we stood almost alone.
Over the cage, biting and clawing, a mob of bees, incited partly by the impostor, endeavored to reach the royal personage. They meant to kill her; first, because she was not of our tribe; secondly, because the impostor had come to own an ascendency over the colony. It was a strange fate, as Crip explained, that we should cling to an impostor and die rather than bring an alien to reign over us. But Crip and I were thinking, and so were many of our little brothers. Crip, on occasion, now gave her food through the wire screen; while I found it convenient to hang about the place. In the mean time the impostor spread her vile brood over the hive, and kept up her conspiracy against the Queen the Master had given us.
Several days passed, and the Master, returning, found what he thought a reconciliation. He opened the cage and out walked the most beautiful Queen I had ever seen, except my own Queen-Mother. Instantly, however, a troop of hostile bees, evidently led by the impostor, fell upon her, and in a moment she was in the center of a “ball” and being slowly crushed to death.
The Master was watching, however, and quickly rescued her and restored her to the cage.
“They are not ready to receive her, son,” he said. “In fact, unless we can destroy the fertile worker, that horrid impostor, we may not succeed.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Crip, to me that night as we stood by the cage and listened to the regal call of the Queen, “that I shall fight the first bee that comes near her.”
“And so shall I.”
Crip had just given her some honey, and was standing near her on the screen when an ugly bee, unusually large, came up and caught hold of one of her legs which had protruded through the meshes of the cage. He laid hold of it and pulled it with all his might, and the Queen began to cry with pain, when Crip rushed to the rescue.
A terrific battle ensued. I tried to help, and did seize the vicious bee by one wing, only to be kicked off. But Crip had grappled him in his vise-like mandibles, and I saw it was a battle to the death. Over and over they whirled, finally to fall to the bottom of the hive—still fighting. I followed as fast as I might, and when I reached where they lay they had ceased to struggle—both were dead.