Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/222

 the beginning to keep things going? That’s why God’s in it, because it is such a wonderful plan, and it is things that men couldn’t do in any way at all. It takes just God to plan life for the bees.

“If the Queen gets home everybody is so tickled when she comes through the door that they kiss her and they comb her hair and they polish her wings and they fix her all up fine. You wouldn’t think there was a thing but love and goodness in their hearts.

“Then what do you think the workers do? You couldn’t ever guess, not in days and days, so I’ll have to tell you. All the white nymphs that they have been feeding royal jelly and that the nurses have been taking care of so fine, get stung. Can you beat it? You know how when any man cheats in business and loves another man up and makes him think he is his friend, and then turns around and takes all his money and maybe kills him, why people say the good man ‘got stung.’ Well, right there in the beehive what happens is ’cause the reason why they say that. All the white nymphs that have been loved up so good and fed the royal jelly, the minute the young Queen gets home all safe and sound, why the white nymphs that would be Queens if they got a chance, they all gee stung to death, and maybe there’s forty or fifty thousand of them—that’s how sure the bees want to feel about having a Queen. They are so dead that the workers carry them out and put them all together with the dead ones.

“The next thing they do is for all the workers to get together and every big, bluffy drone that has been lazing