Nuova.

by Vernon Kellogg.

CHAPTER I.

Nuova Appears.

Nuova seemed to be gradually awakening. It would have seemed that way to any one who could have seen her just at this moment, and it seemed that way to Nuova herself. It was just as if one were in a comfortable, warm bed, and began to be conscious of a faint light outside and of soft voices and of other subdued sounds. The light and sounds grow stronger and louder, until, with a start, one is really awake, and sees that the light is the sunlight of a beautiful morning coming in at the curtained window, and recognizes the sounds to be those of the household already busy with a new day's work.

It was, indeed, an awakening for Nuova; but it was more. It was the beginning of a new life for her. Until now she had been in a sort of pollywog stage for a bee--a stage in which she had no legs nor wings, and in which she could do nothing for herself at all, not even as much as a pollywog can--and had lain all the time in a long, narrow, six-walled, waxen cell that was bed and room all in one. That is, we might say, she had always so far in her life been in bed.

For when she was born in her cell, she was just a tiny white thing, without wings or legs, blind, and quite helpless. Really about all she could do was to squirm a little in her horizontal cell, and keep opening her mouth when she was hungry to let somebody know she must be fed. She was immediately taken care of, however, by the nurse bees who kept near the nursery cells all the time except when they had to go to the pantry cells for more food for the babies. This food was flower nectar and pollen that had been brought into the hive by the active forager bees and stored in the pantry cells. The nurses made a sort of very good and nutritious jelly out of it which made Nuova grow very fast.

After she had been fed in this way for five days, she was many times larger than she had been at first. At the end of this time, however, the nurse bees did what might seem, at first thought, a rather heartless thing. They made a thin cap or cover of wax over the open mouth of Nuova's cell, thus shutting her up tight in her bedroom. She was so large that she almost filled her cell, but there was still a little room left, and this the nurses filled, just before putting the waxen cap on the cell, with pollen and nectar mixed. For a few days Nuova lay quietly in her dark, sealed-up cell, eating, when hungry, from the lump of pollen and nectar which lay by her side. And then she stopped eating and simply lay there in a sort of trance for several days more.

To Nuova herself all her life in the cell, from first day to last, must have seemed little more than a sort of dream; a confused dream of not being able to walk or fly, or see or hear, but only to squirm a little, and be hungry and then be fed, and to feel dimly strange growing pains from the rapidly growing legs and wings when they began to come, and of always being rather comfortably warm and sleepy.

But this sleeping time had come to an end now; this helpless pollywog stage was finished for Nuova. And the light she saw through the big eyes that had grown out on her head, during the last few days in the shut-up cell, was the faint but real light of a new day filtering its way through the crowded hive. And the sounds she heard by means of the many tiny little hearing organs on the long, delicate, sensitive feelers, or antennae, that had also grown out near her eyes and were connected by fine nerves with her brain, were the humming and murmuring of the thousands of industrious bees of the hive who were already at work at their various duties all around her.

Nuova's awaking, then, was much more than the mere waking-up after a night's sleeping. It was the waking from a life of doing nothing but lying in bed and sleeping and eating and growing, to a life of taking care of one's self and helping to take care of others; it was the waking from a baby life to real bee life. For Nuova was now a full-grown bee, with all the wonderful body and all the wonderful instincts and the high intelligence that we know bees to have. But she was still shut up in her nursery cell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The beginning of a new life for Nuova]

However, to escape from it was not difficult. She could see that the faint light came in strongest through the capped end of the cell. The waxen cap was the thinnest part of the walls of her room, and as Nuova's head was already lying close to the cap, it was a simple and easy matter for her to begin biting it away with her two strong, little, trowel-like teeth. In a few moments she had made a little hole in the cap, and the light and sounds came in suddenly much brighter and louder than before, although the light was really not bright at all nor the sounds loud, as we reckon such things. For the inside of a honeybee's house, the hive, is always pretty dark, and the sounds the bees make are not all loud, except occasionally when things are especially exciting and all the bees are buzzing together at once, or when a princess is about to come from her nursery cell and both she and the old queen do a lot of extraordinary trumpeting.

But to Nuova, biting her way out through the thin wax cap of her cell, having never heard nor seen anything at all through all of her baby life, things seemed very bright and noisy indeed. This, however, instead of frightening her, made her only the more anxious to get out and be a part of this exciting world around her, and so she worked away as fast as she could, until suddenly the hole was large enough for her to crawl out. This she did, feeling, we may imagine, rather strange at using her new legs for the first time, and finding her new wings all folded up and rather damp and heavy. But out she came and, with a long breath or two, she started to walk over the uneven surface of the waxen comb in which her nursery cell was situated. But after only a few steps she felt tired and limp. Indeed she was limp, for all the outer part of her body, that was later to be firm and strong, was still rather soft and damp and weak; her legs could not hold her up well yet, and her unexercised muscles needed a little practice to work together just right. So she soon stopped, trembling all over from her unwonted exertion, and let her big eyes gradually take in the strange sight about her.

CHAPTER II.

Nuova's First Experiences.

It was truly a remarkable sight. She found that she was part way up a vertical wall or comb of waxen cells, each of six sides and all lying horizontally in the wall. This wall of cells towered far above her even to the very roof of the hive, and below her it stretched away down to the floor. Facing it towered another similar wall of cells, and there was but little more s.p.a.ce between the two than was needed for the free movement of the scores, aye, even hundreds of bees that were clambering about over the opposite faces of the walls.

In each wall some of the cells were open and some capped over. In the open ones were either baby bees lying on their stomachs with their heads near the opening of the cells, and their mouths opening and shutting in a most comical way, or there was some pollen or honey; or there was nothing at all. The cells with babies in them were those in the middle part of the wall, while around these were the food cells. Near the open nursery cells were many capped ones, and Nuova saw that some of these caps were being gnawed through from the inside. She knew what that meant; she had just been doing that herself. But also near the open and half-filled pollen and honey cells were other capped ones, and Nuova guessed, and quite rightly, that these were filled and sealed-up honey cells. The open pollen cells were pretty to look at because the pollen in them was of different colors, yellow, orange, red, etc., and they made a sort of uneven but attractive color-pattern on the face of the great vertical wall.

Nuova was a little dizzy at first, with looking up and down the towering wall, and she had to hang on tightly to keep from falling. But she soon grew accustomed to the great heights above and below her, and even began to feel quite at home in her peculiar situation. A pang of hunger came to her as she saw a bee walk up to an open honey cell and take a long drink. She started to walk toward the same cell, when she felt a tug at one of her wings, and heard an impatient voice, evidently addressing her.

"Here, wait a minute; we haven't got you clean yet; and your wings aren't half dry. Don't be in a hurry!"

Nuova was startled; remember, it was the first bee-talking, or any kind of talking, she had ever heard. Yet she understood it perfectly, and understood at once, too, just what was going on. For as she turned her head to see who was speaking, she saw that two nurse bees were most industriously cleaning her body all over, and unfolding and smoothing out her wings, so that they would dry rapidly, and dry all properly spread out. Sometimes young bees do not get their wings properly spread before they dry, and then their wings are crumpled up and useless all through their lives.

Nuova had, indeed, for some time rather vaguely felt this gentle cleaning and wing-spreading operation going on, but at first she had felt so dizzy and faint, and then when she felt better had become so intent on looking up and down the two great walls of wax, with their various cells and the many active bees moving about over them, that she had paid no attention to the gentle rubbing and pulling and stretching. Indeed, it was done so gently that unless she had started to walk away, or had accidentally looked around, she might not have known that it was going on at all. It was a performance much like that a just-born kitten goes through at the hands, or rather tongue, of its mother. The pollen and honey, put into her cell when it was capped, had, of course, rather soiled Nuova's body and much of her hair was stuck together by it. So like every young bee, just come from its nursery cell, she needed a good cleaning. And she was getting it.

Without thinking twice about it Nuova did a very surprising thing. Or rather it was not surprising for a bee to do, but it would have been if one of us, just born, as it were, and without any teaching or practice or chance of hearing any one else first, should do it. For we always call surprising, in bees or other creatures, what would be surprising in us, which is a rather silly way of judging things, but one we are all very much given to. As we think we are the most important kind of creatures on earth--as certainly we are, to ourselves--we think our ways of doing things are the usual or normal or even best ways, and all other ways "surprising." But we shall find, the more we learn about Nuova, that bees have their own manner of life and ways of doing things, and one of the most important many differences between their ways and our ways is that they know so many things right off without any learning or practice or imitating of others. They are born knowing how; they do not have to be taught.

For example, the surprising thing that Nuova did right away, without thinking twice about it, was to begin talking to the two nurse bees who were cleaning her. What Nuova said, and what was said to her in return, is of no particular interest to us. It was simply commonplace talk, for Nuova's coming out of her cell, her first dizziness, the high walls of cells, the many bees moving about, the spreading-out of Nuova's wings and cleaning her body, and even Nuova's ability to understand things about her and to begin talking right away--all these were taken for granted in the hive as the most usual things in the world, which therefore needed no special exclaiming or talking about. In fact Nuova felt already that, as soon as she was properly clean and dry, she must join the other active bees, who were all busy with the different kinds of work they were doing, and begin work herself. And she felt that she knew just what this first work for her should be. It should be the work of a nurse. And the nurse bees cleaning her seemed to take this for granted too. For one of them soon said: "I think you had better begin on the other side of the comb; there are enough of us on this side already."

Nuova looked up and down the great comb and then to right and left. The nurse noted this, and added: "You can get around by going either to the top or the bottom, or to either end."

Nuova thanked her, and decided to crawl down to the bottom, for she could see, far down there, a number of bees moving about industriously cleaning the floor and some others that stood still, apparently on their heads, and kept their wings buzzing like mad. She was not quite sure what this performance meant; and the floor-cleaning, too, seemed a little curious. The fact is that, although bees do seem to know right off about things, they know these things one at a time, as it were; that is, when it is time for them to do a thing, they know pretty well, without any telling, how to do it, but they do not seem to know about other things at the same time. They seem to know things only as the time comes for each special thing to be done. Nuova seemed to know that she should begin working as a nurse, and to know how to do the work, for as soon as she started she did just about as well as any of the nurses, but floor-cleaning, and standing on one's head and fanning one's wings like mad, were not things she knew about yet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Industriously cleaning the floor]

She worked her way carefully down to the bottom of the comb and found herself in a very busy place indeed. There was a free place under this comb and under the one opposite to it as well. When she looked under the comb which she had just walked down, she saw a great, low-ceilinged place stretching away in all directions, rather dim and getting darker the farther away it extended, except in one direction. In this direction, however, it was lighter, and the farther the distance the lighter it was. From this lightest part many bees were hurrying toward her with great loads of vari-colored pollen in their pollen baskets, or with their honey sacs filled to overflowing with fresh nectar. They hurried on, paying no attention to any one, and disappeared one by one by climbing up and out of sight, except the few that climbed up the face of either of the combs that towered just over her. These bees she could still watch, and she could see that they carried their loads far up to the open food cells into which they emptied the food they had brought. Also she saw other bees, without loads, hurrying along the floor toward the light, and she had a wonderful thrill as she saw them, and something within her urged her to run with them toward the distant light; something inside her that sang of sunshine, blue sky, green gra.s.s and bushes, and many-hued fragrant flowers. But something else, even stronger, within her, told her not to go; that her work awaited her close at hand; that she must nurse bee-babies here in the dimly lighted hive.

So she turned away from the alluring light with only a glance at the floor-cleaners and the silly bees on their heads with their wings going like mad. So strong within her had grown the feeling that there was just one thing for her now, that she walked under the broad, lower edge of the comb from whose high wall she had descended and came into the bottom of another high s.p.a.ce between two other towering walls of waxen cells.

CHAPTER III.

Nuova as Nurse.

When Nuova had come into this new high s.p.a.ce, she looked up and realized that one of its side walls was simply the other side of the comb in which her nursery cell had been, while the other was that of another comb opposite it, just as she had seen that there was another comb opposite its other side. Nuova, seeing this, easily understood that probably this was the arrangement all through the hive, and that the broad and long, low, free s.p.a.ce running through the whole hive just above the floor was a s.p.a.ce just underneath the lower edges of many great vertical combs standing side by side. Which, of course, was true.

Right away, however, Nuova saw that one of the walls above her was incomplete; it did not reach, along its whole length, from the ceiling clear to the floor, but at one end, the end toward the lighter end of the hive, it came down but a little way from the ceiling. Clinging to this unfinished part of the wall was a great ma.s.s of bees, the upper ones hanging to the free edge of the wall, but the ones below clinging to them and to each other, thus forming a festoon or curtain of bees hanging down from the lower edge of the incomplete wall. Many bees in this living curtain were buzzing their wings violently, while others were quiet, with thin sheets or plates of some shining, silver-yellowish substance forming on the under side of their bodies.

Beneath the lower edge of the bee-curtain there was a broad, free s.p.a.ce beyond which the vertical wall of another more distant comb appeared. On the floor in this open s.p.a.ce were gathered many bees, most of which appeared to be picking up little pieces of the shining, silver-yellowish substance that had broken off from the bees in the festoon above, and fallen to the floor.

As this open s.p.a.ce was lighter than the s.p.a.ce she had come from, Nuova could see everything quite clearly here, and the activity of all the bees and their concentration on whatever they were doing impressed her very much. No one so much as spoke to her; no one spoke to any one else; but every one worked away for dear life. It made her feel that she must get at her own work just as soon as possible.

She glanced up the part of the wall that was all finished, and saw toward its middle a group of nurse bees, and a lot of open and capped nursery cells. She could even see, sticking out of some of the open ones, the comical heads of the babies, each with its mouth regularly opening and shutting. And then she heard a song, a gentle lullaby sort of song. It was the nurse bees singing as they worked. This is the song they sang: We watch beside the cradles When the bee-babies sleep; We guard the shining pantries Where the bee-milk we keep.

And when the countless tiny Bee-mouths open wide, We rush with drink and bee-bread And drop them inside.

Our bread's the daintiest morsel A wee babe could eat; We knead it of soft pollen And flower nectar sweet.

When ends our busy bee-day The nurseries we right, Then wash our countless bee-mites And tuck them in tight.

Just try to feed our family, And swiftly you'll see That never were there nurses So busy as we.

So she started to climb up to them. Just as she had gone a little way up, however, her attention was called to a very active and apparently excited group of bees crowding about a very different sort of cell from the ones that made up all the rest of the comb. This was five or six times as large as any of the others, and not six-sided, but shaped something like a pear with its small end down. It did not lie horizontal in the comb, but vertical, or nearly so, and had a rough, thick wall, and was open at its smaller, lower end. Nuova could not see what was in it, for she was already as high or higher than it was, as it was near the lower edge of the comb, its lower end, indeed, being but a little way above the floor.

As she hesitated a moment, attracted by the sight of the strange cell and the many excited bees about it, most of whom were nurses, she heard a bee, hurrying away from the cell, say to another hurrying toward it: "How fast the princess is growing!"

This did not enlighten Nuova much, but the feeling inside of her was now so strong that she must begin work at once that she hurried on up to the nursery cells lying a little way above the curious large cell without trying to find out anything about it. Which shows again, of course, how different bees are from us.

When Nuova got to the nursery cells with their hungry babies she went right to work. She seemed to know just what to do; to go to the pollen and honey cells and drink honey and eat pollen and swallow them, but not too far, and then wait a few minutes, and then give this food up again, all properly mixed, through her mouth right into the open mouths of the hungry babies. And she knew just what babies were ready to have their cells capped with wax--with a nice little lump of food stored inside first, of course--and how to call some bee with a pellet of wax in its mouth to do the capping. She understood at once that the shining, silver-yellowish plates on the bodies of the bees in the festoon at the end of the comb were wax, and that the pieces being picked up by other bees from the floor underneath the festoon were to be used for capping cells, and for making new cells where the vertical wall of comb was still incomplete.

All these things, and whatever other new ones came up in the next few days in connection with taking care of the babies, she seemed to understand right away, and indeed she seemed to know how to do all her work without having to reason about it, or to observe and draw conclusions; in fact, without even once really having to think about it at all. And because it was all so simple, and so easy to understand, an extraordinary thing came to pa.s.s with Nuova; that is, an extraordinary thing for a bee. The thing was that Nuova got tired of her work!

Yes, she got tired of it; tired physically, which is not perhaps so extraordinary, for bees sometimes fall dead from being over-tired physically; but she also got tired and impatient of the simplicity and monotony of what she was doing. She got, I suppose we may fairly say, mentally and spiritually tired of it. Which happening marks Nuova as a bee of a strange and rare kind: a bee that is--is--well, all I can say is, a bee that is different. Other bees, if they had known of it, would have called her a "funny" bee, or a "peculiar" bee; or perhaps something worse. Indeed, this something worse is just what she was soon called. For Nuova, after a few days of this steady care of babies, one hot afternoon--the hive was so set in the garden that it was quite exposed to the sun--Nuova, I say, one hot afternoon stopped working, and crawled slowly down past the great pear-shaped cell clear to the lower edge of the comb and there she sat and simply did nothing!

Pretty soon Uno, one of the nurse bees in Nuova's group, who had already shown herself to have a rather spiteful nature, noticed that Nuova was not working, was not, indeed, to be seen anywhere about the nurse cells. So she touched another nurse bee near her, named Due, with her antennae so as to call her attention, and said in a low voice: "Where is Nuova?"

Due looked around, and not seeing Nuova, said: "Why, where is she?" Then both bees touched a third nurse bee, named Tre, with their antennae. She turned around and joined them.

"What's the matter?" she said. Then looking at the group of nurses, she added: "Where is Nuova?"

"That's it," said Uno and Due together. "Where is Nuova? She isn't here--she has stopped working."

"Exactly," said Tre. "I thought she would come to that--I've been noticing her lately. She doesn't seem to like to work."

"Whoever heard of such a bee!" exclaimed Uno and Due together.

"Let us find her," said Tre.

So all three started to move around over the comb looking for Nuova. They made wider and wider journeys from the nursery cells, until Uno, who had got down almost to the very bottom of the comb and was quite close to Nuova but had not yet seen her, heard a low voice murmuring, "I am so tired."

Uno turned quickly and saw Nuova. She was sitting with her head hanging down on her breast, and she looked very tired and dejected. But that aroused no sympathy in Uno, who, together with Due and Tre, had taken a strong dislike to Nuova, feeling in her, some way, a rather different, even a rather superior sort of bee. Nuova was so unusually pretty, for one thing. And she had such a lively interest in everything around her. Uno, Due, and Tre, who were bees almost exactly like each other, and like most other bees, felt an instinctive malice toward her, probably based on a certain envy which they did not, however, even admit to themselves.

Uno quickly called Due and Tre, and the three stared malevolently at Nuova for a moment and then said together, speaking loudly so that the other bees near by could hear: "Well, what a bee! To stop work! Just think of it!"

Then Uno leaned over her and called to her: "Lazy!"

And Due stepped up to her and said: "Loafer!"

And Tre came up on the other side of her and hissed: "Shirk!"

Then all three, lifting their wings to strike poor Nuova, who had sat very still through all this, shrinking from the vicious bees, called out: "We'll teach her!" And then they began to strike her all over with their strong wings.

It was going pretty badly with Nuova, when an old floor-cleaner named Saggia stepping up to the group shouldered off the three angry nurse bees. Saggia had noticed at other times that Nuova went rather slowly back and forth between the nursery cells and the food cells, but she had a good heart and thought it was because Nuova was sick, perhaps, for bees often get ill just as we do. She spoke to Nuova rather sharply, but still in a kindly way.

"Nuova! what are you doing here? You mustn't stop."

"But I am so tired," replied poor Nuova. "Thank you for driving them away," she added.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I am so tired," replied poor Nuova]

"Tired, nonsense," said Saggia. "That's nothing. Of course you are tired. We all are. But what difference does that make? Go back to the babies, and keep on with your work."

"That is what they all say," cried Nuova, bitterly and half angrily. "Here am I a full week out of my nursery cell, and I haven't had a bit of rest or fun yet. It is time I began to have some. Doesn't any one ever rest or have a good time?"

Saggia was painfully surprised to hear Nuova talk in this manner. She began to fear that Nuova's tiredness was not just physical tiredness. She answered her therefore in a strongly reproving manner. "Of course n.o.body rests, and of course every one has a good time. Look at them all," and she waved an antenna toward the workers at the nursery cells, "don't you see what a good time they are having? It is having a good time to be always working; always working for each other and for our children."

"But they aren't our children," Nuova broke in, "yours and mine, that is, nor anybody's but the Queen's children. She is the mother of them all. And she keeps on having more. And we have to take care of them all, and all the time."

"They are our children," Saggia interrupted, speaking very positively and still more reprovingly. "They are the children of the community; the children of the race. It is our race we are working for; the children of the race. Think of it!"

Nuova made a little face. "Well, I am tired of the race and the race's children," she said. "I want some children of my own."

Old Saggia was dreadfully shocked by this. And she was terrified on Nuova's account for fear some other bees might have heard her. It was, indeed, about as rebellious a thing as a bee can say.

"Hush, child," said Saggia in a whisper. "You mustn't say such things. You mustn't even think them. Other bees don't. And you must hurry back to your work before the others miss you." She helped Nuova up, and urged her to begin climbing back up to the nurse cells. "If you are tired of taking care of the babies you can do something else next week. You will be old enough then to make wax and build cells or help clean the hive. And then in another week you can go out and gather pollen and nectar from the flowers. But go back now to the babies; the other nurses are looking for you." She urged Nuova along again, and this time Nuova started up, but she went very reluctantly and slowly.

"No," she said, "they pay no attention to me. n.o.body but you pays any attention to me, except when I stop working. They never notice me when I am hard at work."

"Why, of course not," replied Saggia gently. "Why should you be noticed then? That is what we all do all the time; just keep everlastingly at it. That is what makes the bees such a great people. There is something wrong about a bee that doesn't want to work all the time; you mustn't be different from the others. I am afraid you are sick."

All the time she was saying this Saggia was urging Nuova along up the comb toward the nursery cells, and now they had quite reached the group of nurses. As Uno, Due, and Tre saw Nuova again they closed in around her so as to strike or pinch her. But Saggia kept them off. And Nuova slipped into her place again in front of a hungry baby.

CHAPTER IV.

Nuova sees Some Other Things Done.

Just as Nuova took her place again, however, she heard in the distance a joyful singing. It came from the lightest place in the hive, and looking in this direction Nuova saw a whole group of nectar gatherers coming along together, half-dancing and turning about, and all singing together in the happiest way possible. This is what they sang: Take a peep into the pail, Nectar to the brim, Carried over down and dale Till the ways were dim.

On a dawn-ray forth we sped, A thousand wings in tune, By a new-born wind were led Down the paths of June.

Silvery world of buzz and whirr, Fragrance on the wing, Sod and root and blade astir, Sped our garnering.

Long in Nature's honey-room We dipped and drank at will; Brushed the purple lilac plume, Sipped from thyme and dill.

Till when evening softly bore Over dune and dell, Hastened we with golden store Home to Queen and cell.

And then she heard another song, and saw a group of pollen gatherers following the nectar gatherers. And this is what they sang: Here's saffron dust and crimson dust, And dust of rarest blue; In lavish Nature's pollen mines Each mines his favorite hue.

Some buzzed and burrowed all the morn Within a clover hold, Till fuzzy backs were powdered fine And thigh-bags bulged with gold.

And some delved deep in lily cups, Or hung from blossomy bells-- The story of their mazy flight The rainbow treasure tells.

There's pollen sweet for roof and wall, And more for soft bee-bread; For all, from wondrous Mother-Queen To bee-mite, must be fed.

Here's palest pink and lilac dust, And green and brown and blue; In lavish Nature's pollen fields Each finds his favorite hue.

They liked their work, these foragers, that was sure, and Nuova felt that she would like that kind of work too. Just then Mela, one of the pollen gatherers, climbing up the comb where Nuova was, with her pollen baskets filled by two great ma.s.ses of golden yellow pollen, stopped for a moment for breath. Nuova stretched her antenna toward Mela and touched her, attracting her attention.