"You do well," quoth the Queen, "to appeal to my mercy, and I will be merciful. I will remit half of the sentence. Lock him up for twenty-four hours, but do not feed him at all." [Illustration] The thoughtless drone was arrested and taken away, and the Queen resumed. "It's not that we work too hard," she said. "It is that we make too much of one kind of thing. If the honey consumers only want ten million pounds of honey, it is foolish for us to make twenty million pounds of it, and I think we should turn our attention to other fields." "I did," said one. "I brought a country doctor five dollars by stinging a small boy." "How often have I told you not to sting small boys?" frowned the Queen. [Illustration] "I couldn't help it, your Majesty," returned the bee, humbly. "I was flying along a garden path, and the small boy came running up; he ran so fast he collided with me, and ere I knew it my stinger had penetrated his flesh." "You had no business to have your stinger out," said the Queen. "Oh yes, your Majesty," explained the bee, "I had to have it out, for I had come to that garden to sharpen it upon the grindstone of the boy's father. Had the boy been looking where he was going, it would not have happened." "Ah!" said the Queen, smiling with pleasure; "that is different. If you taught the small boy a lesson you worked to some purpose, and you are forgiven. I don't see, however, how you still live if you really stung the child. Pray explain." "He was a tender little chap--that is all," said the bee. "And I had no trouble in pulling my sting out of his soft little cheek. It was like a peach." Again the Queen smiled. "I am pleased with you," she said, and then turning again to the assembled multitude, she resumed her speech. "Now that we know what our trouble is, shall we not act accordingly? Shall we continue year in and year out wasting our valuable time in the making of honey that nobody wants, or shall we look about for something new to do which, after we have made all the honey that is needed, shall still keep us busy, so that people seeing us shall be able to call us 'the busy bees' as of yore? What is the will of my subjects?" "Let us branch out! Let us do other things," buzzed the beepulace. "I knew my confidence in your judgment was not misplaced," cried the Queen, joyously. "It now remains for us to decide what, and I here to-day in the presence of you all as witnesses proclaim my intention to give the hand of my eldest daughter to that one of you who shall suggest the scheme that shall seem best for our new line of action." [Illustration]