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Updated: May 7, 2025
"That is the truth," said the Queen's voice behind them. They had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating. Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body forward. "Can you suggest a remedy?" she said. "New principles!" cried the Wax-moth from her crevice. "We'll apply them quietly later." "Suppose we sent out a swarm?" Melissa suggested.
"Aren't you confusing pod hoc with propter hoc?" said the Bee Master. "Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees let them in." A third frame crackled and rose into the light. "All this is full of laying workers' brood. That never happens till the stock's weakened. Phew!" He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also crumbled to pieces.
The Wax-moth caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid another egg. "You mustn't lay here," cried Melissa. "You aren't a Queen." "My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour those aren't eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to die for them." She raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp round her. "If you'd like to kill me, pray do."
A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames roared up and consumed all that fuel. "We must disinfect," said a Voice. "Get me a sulphur-candle, please." The swarm watched the light leaking through the cracks all the long night. At dawn one Wax-moth came by, fluttering impudently.
"You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to spreading her principles, and and she looks lovely!" An old, baldish bee came up the comb. "Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!" she said. The Wax-moth slipped aside. The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering. "What's the matter with 'em?" said the oldster.
After the Wax-moth has grown strong, a Shadow will fall across the gate; a Voice will speak from behind a Veil; there will be Light, and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in one great fire."
Myself, I think not." "Tut! Tut!" the Wax-moth cried. "You good, fat people always prophesy ruin if things don't go exactly your way. But I grant you there will be changes." There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars.
"Can you blame 'em, father?" said a second voice. "It's rotten with Wax-moth. See here!" Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke away in rustling flakes of ashy rottenness. "Number Four Frame! That was your mother's pet comb once," whispered Melissa to the Princess. "Many's the good egg I've watched her lay there."
Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent. If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.
Fanning tries a bee's temper, because she must always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows it. The Wax-moth crept forth, and caressed Melissa again. "I see," she murmured, "that at heart you are one of Us."
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