d up for winter or food
that will be needed for the children."

The Drones chuckled. It was all right for them to be lazy, they thought,
but they never could bear to see a Worker waste time. "Ah," cried one of
them suddenly, "what is the new swarm doing now?"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the Queen Mother crawled
into the hive again. "Such dreadful luck!" said she. "A cloud passed
over the sun just as we were alighting on a tree to rest."

"I wouldn't have come back for that," said a Drone.

"No," said she, in her airiest way, "I dare say you wouldn't, but I
would. I dare not go to a new home after a cloud has passed over the
sun. I think it is a sign of bad luck. I should never expect a single
egg to hatch if I went on. We shall try it again to-morrow."

All the others came back with her, and the hive was once more crowded
and hot. "Oh dear!" said the tender-hearted Worker, "isn't it too bad to
think they couldn't go?"

The next morning they started again and were quite as excited over it as
before. The Queen Mother had fussed and fidgeted all the time, although
she had laid nine hundred and seventy-three eggs while waiting, and that
in spite of interruptions. "Being busy keeps me from thinking," said
she, "and I must do something." This time the Queen Mother lighted on an
apple-tree branch, and the others clung to her until all who had left
the hive were in a great mass on the branch,--a mass as large as a small
cabbage. They meant to rest a little while and then fly away to the new
home chosen by their guides.

While they were hanging here, the farmer came under the tree, carrying
a long pole with a wire basket fastened to the upper end. He shook the
clustered Bees gently into it, and then changed them into an empty hive
that stood beside their old home.

"Now," said the Workers who had stayed in the old hive, "we will let out
the new Queen, for the Queen Mother will never return."

It did not take long to bite away the waxen wall and let her out. Then
they gathered around and caressed her, and touched their feelers to her
and waited upon her, and explained why they could not let her out
sooner. She was still a soft gray color, like all young Bees when they
first come from the cell, but this soon changed to the black worn by her
people.

The Workers flew in and out, and brought news from the hive next door.
They could not go there, for the law does not allow a Bee who lives in
one home to v