Shall I tell you?

First of all, other bees come to help them to unload; then those that are hungry eat the honey; and what is not wanted is stored away in the cells which those that stay at home are making.

But how do they get the wax for their cells?  It does not grow in flowers.

No; they make it out of honey which they retain instead of storing.  It comes while the bees are quiet; and many bees hang together for a long time while the wax is forming.  It then oozes out in thin flakes on their bodies; and this they knead till it is soft enough to build with.

They bring home from the fields something besides pollen and honey; it is a gummy substance which they get from the buds of trees.  They use it with the wax, partly as a varnish and partly to make it stronger.  They mend up broken places with it, and it answers the purpose of cement.

They use their cells for three things:  to store honey, to store bee bread, and others are used to rear the young bees,—­nurseries, in fact.

Bees have a great deal to do besides getting honey and building their cells.  They have their young ones to take care of.  As soon as an egg is hatched they feed the grub with great care; and in about ten days it wants no more food, but spins a kind of web round itself, and lies quite still for about ten days more, when it comes out a bee, ready for work.

Only one bee lays eggs.  She is the queen and the mother of all the others.  She is a good deal larger than they are, and they all obey her.

One day about the end of May, just as the children’s lessons for the morning were over, they heard the gardener come into the hall to tell their grandpapa that one of the hives had swarmed.

“Oh! what is that?” they cried.  “Do tell us; do let us go and see.”

“Wait a little, wait a little,” said grandpapa.  “It means that the hive won’t hold all the bees any longer; there are too many of them in it, and the old queen bee has left it, with some thousands of her subjects, to a young queen that will now reign in her stead.”

“We must see about a new hive for her, gardener.”

“Yes, sir; we have it all ready.  Bob is waiting with it in the garden now.”

Bob was the young man who milked the cow, and minded the pony and the pigs and fowls.

“Oh, do let us go too,” cried all the children.

“I must hear what grandmamma says,” said grandpapa.  “It won’t do for any of you to get stung, you know.”

Just then grandmamma came into the hall to see what all the commotion was about.

The three children turned to her and said, “Do let us go to see the bees put into their new hive.”

“Where have they swarmed?” asked grandmamma.

“On to a plum-tree, ma’am, quite close to the hives,” said the gardener.—­“I don’t think the little ones will come to any harm if you will let them go,” he added, when he saw their eager looks.