[Illustration: "What?" she cried, "Well, you really are a stupid Bee"]
Nuova, who did not like to be handled so roughly, and talked to so sharply, was almost in tears. She seemed to be always getting reproved. However, she said rather maliciously to Fessa: "Well, do you like to work with that sticky stuff? What do you do with it, anyway?"
But Fessa had already turned back to her work and paid no attention to her. In fact she had already begun, with her two or three other crack-filling companions, to sing a slow, "sticky" sort of song, as they kept stuffing propolis into a crack in the roof. Although I cannot give you the strange, monotonous melody of the song, I can give you the words. They were these:
We're the soft putty crew, Dripping the oozy glue, Squeezing our resins through Cranny and crack.
Stuffing with pure cement Crevice and chink and rent, Where creeping airs have sent Warning of Bee Moth bent On sly attack.
Yes, we are the safety crew, Spreading with trowel true Fragrant and golden glue, Gumming each crack.
_Nuova sees Bee Moth and gets acquainted with Beffa_
As the crack-fillers kept on singing their monotonous song over and over while they worked, and as they paid no attention whatever to Nuova, she turned away after a few minutes of listening to them, and stared around her.
It was the first time she had been clear up to the roof of the hive and she saw that here, as at the bottom, there was a low, free space for the whole length and breadth of the hive. It was rather dark up here, and very warm and stuffy, for the warm air rising from the body of the hive could not escape, as the propolis workers had filled all of the crevices and cracks in the roof and where the great flat roof-board rested on the vertical sides of the hive.
Nuova felt glad she was not a crack-filler, and turned to go down to the wax-making group where she belonged, when she saw a curious, dusky-gray creature, not a bee, although with big eyes and long antennæ and wings, which are all things that bees have also. But this creature's body was much slenderer than a bee's, its antennæ very much longer and slenderer, and its wings not only longer, but covered over, as was the body, with myriads of small scales and hairs. These wings were so folded that they covered all the back and most of the sides of the body and trailed out beyond the tip of the body. The creature was walking rapidly and nervously along the broad, upper edge of the comb on which Nuova stood, and seemed to be quite at home in the dim light of this space just under the roof.