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It was the start of busy days for me. When I awoke in the morning, I descended to the nursery on the second basement. There, I cleaned the empty honeycombs that my fellow honeybees had left following their birth. Although none of these honeycombs had ever served as my cradle, I mimicked what my fellow honeybees from Room Q were doing. The large nursery was full of worker bees from other floors and other rooms. They were all dedicated to performing their work without any idle chatting. Times for meals were not fixed, of course. It seemed that, if you felt hungry, you could go to the nectar cellar at anytime.  I was eager to go to the nectar cellar soon.I was thinking of sweet nectar; I was very hungry. "Shall we go up?" A honeybee from Room Q who was next to me suddenly spoke to me. "Yes." I nodded with great joy. The other bee went ahead, up the stairway to the nectar cellar. The other fellow bees followed her. When we were in the nectar cellar, no one seemed to be eating the nectar. The bees simply started cleaning the honeycombs so that they could be reused as nectar pots. Ah!I had become painfully aware of my lowly human instincts and sighed a deep sigh without uttering a word. For two days, I was so busy that I came to think less and less. On the morning of the third day, I left Room Q with my fellow bees. The corridor on the third floor was full of honeybees from Room O, Room P and Room R. Honeybees that were descending occupied the six ladders. Even so, I could not believe that there were less worker bees now. For some time, I stood behind the door of Room Q and waited for the other bees to descend. I wasn't consciously trying to avoid doing my work. I simply thought I would check out the seventh floor once because I would be too busy to do so once I started working. "I'll soon get back to work. I'll only be gone a second." I made an excuse to myself and crawled up the ladder from which worker bees has descended. The corridor on the seventh floor was quite dim because the windows were small. I made a round outside the hexagonal room in the center. Suddenly I heard a low, deep voice behind me. I looked back apprehensively and saw some honeybees with big eyes coming into the corridor from where the ladder was. They were male drone bees. The size of a male bee is about twice that of a worker bee. In a panic, I looked around me for a hiding place but couldn't find one. I stretched myself out thinly and squeezed into the gap between the wall and the floor of the dark corridor. The male bees passed by me as they whispered among themselves in a low voice. They slammed the door and entered their room, I think. Perhaps it's because I was such a small honeybee that I felt intimidated by the male bees. I decided that I would never peep into the room of male bees by myself. I hurried to a nearby ladder, to try and get caught up with my work. When I got down to the workshop, many worker bees were at work diligently at their respective posts. My new job was to care for the senior larva who were in their third day of life after hatching. I looked for my fellow bees in Room Q and joined in the work with a nonchalant expression on my face. But the honeybees were rather strange, I thought. None of them criticized me for being this late. They were apparently dedicated to working in silence. It seems you could loaf around if you want to. Thinking that way, I was very ashamed of myself for having wasted my time on the way back, although I don't know why. The will to work was beginning to arise within me. I mimicked my fellow bees and went out to the nectar cellar. I ate a lot of nectar and pollen and regurgitated it in the honeycomb where a senior larva lay. During this process, our bodies generate something nutritious like a serving of milk as feed for the larvae. Some worker bees in the nursery find larvae that are half pupal and seal the honeycomb with wax that they regurgitate, some take care of young larvae exclusively, and some clean empty honeycombs like I did up to yesterday. The bodies of the honeybees undergo changes every other day, and the work they do changes accordingly. I knew this from the stories my father told me. But when it came to actually experiencing it, it seemed so odd that I found myself looking away. A honeybee thinks of nothing but work. Everyone works too hard and sometimes there is little work left in the evening. Even so, the honeybees in the nursery are always busy working. They find some work somewhere and move around. The sixth day was my first day taking care of young larvae. But I could hardly find any larvae to take care of. All I found was numerous empty honeycombs. I have little work to do because my hardworking fellow worker bees always get it done before I have a chance to start on it. All I did was simply go back and forth between the nursery and the nectar cellar. "How come there are so few larvae?" I asked my fellow bees in Room Q but nobody gave me an answer. Although the honeybees are all girls, they seldom chat. I swallowed nectar from the nectar cellar but couldn't find a honeycomb in which to deposit it. I suddenly began to choke. It felt as if a strange smelling substance was coming up from the bottom of my throat. Oh, so this is royal jelly!I was obliged to swallow the substance that had now filled my mouth. Every newborn honeybee is given a little bit of royal jelly. A larva that is given royal jelly every day in a honeycomb of a special large size grows up to be a queen bee. The egg of a worker bee and that of a queen bee are the same thing. But how come there were so many empty honeycombs?I thought once again. I suddenly realized the reason. The new queen was undergoing preparation for marriage, so she could not lay any eggs. This was a serious situation!I was just thinking the way that a normal honeybee would. The population of the honeybees in the castle remains the same for days. At this thought, my body began to move restlessly. A restless honeybee with no particular work to do, that's what I was. I spent the time moving around with my fellow workers in the nursery and the nectar cellar until the evening of that day. |
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