_And now my locks are thin and gray, For years since then have slipped away, For gladness or regret! And ah, the woods where now I roam, And those wide chambers of my home, Know thee no more, Ninette! Since I shall never find thee then, Oh, let this Book remind thee then Of a wood where birches met: For thou canst not remember it, And I can ne'er forget!_ EWALD'S DANISH NATURE STORIES. Series I. The Queen Bee [Illustration: THE QUEEN BEE] The farmer opened his hive. "Off with you!" he said to the bees. "The sun is shining, and everywhere the flowers are coming out, so that it is a joy to see them. Get to work, and gather a good lot of honey for me to sell to the shopkeeper in the autumn. 'Many a streamlet makes a river,' and you know these are bad times for farmers." "What does that matter to us?" said the bees. But all the same they flew out; for they had been sitting all the winter in the hive, and they longed for a breath of fresh air. They hummed and buzzed, they stretched their legs, they tried their wings. They swarmed out in all directions; they crawled up and down the hive; they flew off to the flowers and bushes, or wandered all round on the ground. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Last of all came the queen. She was bigger than the others, and it was she who ruled the hive. "Stop your nonsense, little children," she said, "and set to work and do something. A good bee does not idle, but turns to with a will and makes good use of its time." So she divided them into parties and set them to work. "You over there, fly out and see if there is any honey in the flowers. The others can collect flower-dust, and when you come home give it in smartly to the old bees in the hive." Away they flew at once. But all the very young ones stayed behind. They made the last party, for they had never been out with the others. "What are _we_ to do?" they asked. "You! you must perspire," said the queen. "One, two, three! Then we can begin our work." And they perspired as well as they had learned to, and the prettiest yellow wax came out of their bodies. "Good!" said the queen. "Now we will begin to build." The old bees took the wax, and began to build a number of little six-sided cells, all alike and close up to one another. All the time they were building, the others came flying in with flower-dust and honey, which they laid at the queen's feet. "We can now knead the dough," she said. "But first put a little honey in--that makes it taste so much better." They kneaded and kneaded, and before very long they had made some pretty little loaves of bee-bread, which they carried into the cells. "Now let us go on with the building," commanded the queen bee, and they perspired wax and built for all they were worth. "And now _my_ work begins," said the queen, and she heaved a deep sigh; for her work was the hardest work of all.