Among the Farmyard PeoplePierson, Clara Dillingham
History
Among the Farmyard People
Pierson, Clara Dillingham
Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; Natural history -- Juvenile fiction
Most of the Bees are Workers. They are smaller than either the Queen
Mother or the Drones, and they gather all the honey, make all the wax,
build the comb, and feed the babies. They keep the hive clean, and when
the weather is very warm, some of them fan the air with their wings to
cool it. They guard the doorway of the hive, too, and turn away the
robbers who sometimes come to steal their honey.
In these busy homes, nobody can live long just for himself. Everybody
helps somebody else, and that makes life pleasant. The Queen Mother
often lays as many as two thousand eggs in a day. Most of these are
Worker eggs, and are laid in the small cells of the brood comb, which is
the nursery of the hive. A few are Drone eggs and are laid in large
cells. She never lays any Queen eggs, for she does not want more Queens
growing up. It is a law among the Bees that there can be only one grown
Queen living in each home.
The Workers, however, know that something might happen to their old
Queen Mother, so, after she has gone away, they sometimes go into a cell
where she has laid a Worker egg, and take down the waxen walls between
it and the ones on either side to make a very large royal cell. They
bite away the wax with their strong jaws and press the rough edges into
shape with their feet. When this egg hatches, they do not feed the baby,
or Larva, with tasteless bread made of flower-dust, honey, and water, as
they would if they intended it to grow up a Worker or a Drone. Instead,
they make what is called royal jelly, which is quite sour, and tuck this
all around the Larva, who now looks like a little white worm.
The royal jelly makes her grow fast, and in five days she is so large as
to nearly fill the cell. Then she stops eating, spins a cocoon, and lies
in it for about two and a half days more. When she comes out of this,
she is called a Pupa. Sixteen days after the laying of the egg, the
young Queen is ready to come out of her cell. It takes twenty-one days
for a Worker to become fully grown and twenty-five for a Drone.
In the hive by the cedar tree, the Queen Mother was growing restless
and fussy. She knew that the Workers were raising some young Queens, and
she tried to get to the royal cells. She knew that if she could only do
that, the young Queens would never live to come out. The Workers knew
this, too, and whenever she came near there, they made her go away.
The Queen Larvae and Pupae were of different ages, and one of them was now
ready to leave her cell. They could hear her crying to be let out, but
they knew that if she and the Queen Mother should meet now, one of them
would die. So instead of letting her out, they built a thick wall of wax
over the door and left only an opening through which they could feed
her. When she was hungry she ran her tongue out and they put honey on
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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