Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/221

 some more, and they are too lazy to live like the other bees do, but the worker bees know the hive can’t go on without them, so they clean up after them. Nobody likes them very well, but nobody says a word because they are part of God’s plan. It’s all right for ’em to have a good time while they’ve got the chance; they don’t know a little bit about what’s coming to them.

“So when the young Queen goes out, all the males think they would like to court her, and from all the different hives they go swarming up after her. They spread their wings so wide and they fly so hard and fast that they get all swelled up and get more air inside them than they ever had before, and they get different from the way they were before they started. It takes a good, fine strong one to go as high as the Queen goes. Finally, when some of them get ’way up mighty close to Heaven, all alone up there, where the sky is blue and the day is sweet and everything is so nice and fine, the Queen says which one may be her King. Then they get married. They don’t have but a little bit of a honeymoon, for the Queen says she must go straight home and go to work. So she doesn’t even wait to say good-bye to the King; she just gives him a big push, so big and hard it kills him and he falls down to the ground, deader than anything. And she goes home and goes into the door, and she’s lucky if she gets home and gets in the door ’cause on account of birds and things. That’s why there are more white nymphs waiting, so that if the young Queen doesn’t come back, another one can be got ready and sent out. You see how it’s all fixed up from