There once was a very good little bee who always did his work in a timely manner, and he always did an outstanding job. Because he was so good at what he did, he was given a lot of work to do, even though he was very young. He never once complained about his workload, and the honey in his hive always overflowed.
One day he went out into the meadow to gather some nectar
from flowers and was distressed by how cool the air seemed. All he remembered in his young life was warm air,
and this new cool air frightened him. He
found he had to work his wings a little faster in order to stay warm
enough. The next thing that surprised
him was that there were not many flowers left from which to gather his
nectar. He had just visited this part of
the meadow a couple of weeks ago and it was brimming with flowers, but now
there were very few.
He finally found a large daisy and was about to alight when
he saw a stunningly beautiful butterfly on it.
“Buzz off, ugly bee!” she said rudely, so he landed instead on a tiny mouse
ear flower next to her.
“Where are all the flowers?” he asked her.
“Gone bye-bye like I will be soon,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m heading south soon for better food,” she said, “Because
it won’t be long now.”
“Won’t be long for what?” he asked.
“The deep freeze.
When you die and I dine on tropical nectar.”
 |
| The industrious little bee. |
The little bee was taken aback. What did she mean, “when you die,” he
wondered. The thoughts that came to him
frightened him half to death right there.
He left the meadow and headed back to his hive, and he could hear the
butterfly laughing at him as he left.
When he got back to the hive, he told an old worker bee all about what
had happened, and then he sat down and wept.
The old worker bee waited patiently until he finished crying his eyes
out, and then he told the little bee that he had something he wanted to show
him. Together they went through the
hive, often in places the little bee had never been before.
“Do you see all this honey?” the worker bee asked, and the
little bee nodded. “This is what we’ll
eat all through the long cold winter.
And just wait until you taste it!
If you think nectar is good, you are in for a thrill!” This perked the little bee up a bit. “And we’ll take this extra wax here and we’ll
block up most of our entrance to keep the cold out so our hive will be
nice. On days when it’s really cold,
we’ll all fan our wings together to make us all warm. And there’ll be new little bees to take care
of, too, and it’ll be such fun!” the old worker bee said.
“So we won’t all die?” asked the little bee.
“Not a chance!” said the old worker bee, “and our hive is
strong, too, so it will be here a long time.
We’ve worked very hard at building a good and safe home, and those who
work hard are always rewarded. Now, let’s
go find that butterfly.”
So the two of them flew off to the meadow and found the
butterfly who was lazily slurping nectar from the daisy.
“See here, now, what do you mean by scaring my little
friend?” asked the old worker bee.
“He’s a working fool,” said the butterfly, “working away for
no reason when all he has to do is fly south and find more nectar there. And why spend so much time working endlessly
on a hive when any old leaf on a tree will do to shelter under?”
“We like to plan ahead,” said the old worker bee, “because
we like to be prepared for any emergency.
We take care of our own and we work together and we build ourselves a
safety net. Maybe you should think about
it yourself.”
“Ha!” said the butterfly, “I am so outrageously beautiful and
colorful that I have no need for a safety net.
I am visible for miles because of my beautiful wings, and I am welcomed
wherever I go and treated as royalty. I
wouldn’t expect lowly bees such as yourselves to understand.”
And with that, the butterfly flew off into the
sunshine. But no sooner had she taken
flight when a huge old black crow swooped down from a tree and gobbled her up
in one bite!
“Pah! Bitter!” he
said as he flew back up to the tree. He
looked down greedily at the two bees but thought wiser of it when the old
worker bee showed him his sizable stinger.
This display was not missed by the little bee, who brimmed with pride at
being a clever and industrious bee like his old worker bee friend.
The two bees flew off happily together back to the hive,
where they had a little snack of honey.
The little bee was very happy to be a little bee. And as for the old black crow, he flew off in
the other direction with a loud burp.
