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The Queen said that that was a good idea. And the honey-makers, who had come outside the house, all agreed that it was a fine suggestion. But not one of them wanted to go with Freddie. "Then you'll have to draw lots," the Queen told them severely. When the honey-makers heard that, one of them tried to slip away. But the Queen saw her and called her back. Then they drew lots.
"They're the greatest honey-makers I ever saw. But I didn't have any place to take them, so I had to let them go. You're a lucky boy you got them for a song, but do you know how to handle them?" he inquired. "You'll have to look out for them now very carefully, or you may lose them. The spring is the time they require watching so they don't starve."
So clever is he that when he eats bees, as he sometimes does, he seldom takes the honey-makers, but mainly the drones; perhaps he is afraid of being stung." "What is a drone, Uncle Roy?" asked Dodo. "A bee which does not work for its living and cannot sting." "The Kingbird is proud of his nest, which he often confides to a maple on the edge of a garden, or to your pet pear tree.
Here it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of bees becomes an impossibility. That honey is fatal to larvæ is a fact pregnant with consequences. Various predatory insects feed their young with honey-makers.
"I know of something you could do that would help," he persisted, in a much louder voice. "The honey-makers could work after dark if you'd only get the Firefly family to furnish lights for them." A number of Buster's relations snickered when they heard his plan. It struck them as being too silly for anything. But his mother, the Queen, looked very thoughtful.
"Why do you think we're queer?" Buster asked him. "Don't you call it a bit odd having a dance at this time of day?" "Bless you! They're not dancing in there!" Buster Bumblebee cried. "That's the workers storing away the honey. They're always buzzing like that. Perhaps you didn't know that our honey-makers can't work without being noisy. To tell the truth, they wake me every morning.
"It's all the fault of that boy Buster," they told one another. "If he hadn't suggested his horrid plan to his mother we wouldn't have to work half the night and lose half our sleep." "I wish he was here now!" one of the honey-makers exclaimed fiercely. "I'd make it hot for him!" But now they were so angry that they were not the least bit sleepy. Their own buzzing kept them awake.
And Chirpy Cricket tells me your family always goes to bed at sunset." "So we do!" Buster agreed. "But my mother, the Queen, is going to order her honey-makers to work overtime for the present. And she wants you and your family to furnish lights so they can see what they're doing." "Oh! That's different!" Freddie Firefly exclaimed. "I thought she wanted me to help make honey.
"Don't you come near me!" snapped the worker angrily. "Keep away or I'll sting you!" she threatened. Naturally, a happy, easy-going person like Buster Bumblebee wasn't looking for trouble of that sort. So he dodged clumsily out of sight behind a milkweed; and he made up his mind then that that was the last time he would ever have anything to do with one of those testy honey-makers.
Buster Bumblebee's mother told her forty-nine honey-makers that Freddie Firefly and at least forty-eight of his relations were expected at the Bumblebees' house at dusk. "Each of the Fireflies will furnish each of you with a light," the Queen explained, "so you'll be able to go to the clover field almost as easily as you do in the daytime. You're to work until midnight.
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