Nuova; or, The New BeeKellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
Science
Nuova; or, The New Bee
Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman)
Bees -- Folklore; Bees -- Juvenile fiction
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 antennæ
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 antennæ. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account