Nuova; or, The New Bee
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CHAPTER I
_Nuova Appears_
Nuova seemed to be gradually awakening. It would have seemed that way toany one who could have seen her just at this moment, and it seemed thatway to Nuova herself. It was just as if one were in a comfortable, warmbed, and began to be conscious of a faint light outside and of softvoices and of other subdued sounds. The light and sounds grow strongerand louder, until, with a start, one is really awake, and sees that thelight is the sunlight of a beautiful morning coming in at the curtainedwindow, and recognizes the sounds to be those of the household alreadybusy with a new day's work.
It was, indeed, an awakening for Nuova; but it was more. It was thebeginning of a new life for her. Until now she had been in a sort ofpollywog stage for a bee--a stage in which she had no legs nor wings,and in which she could do nothing for herself at all, not even as muchas a pollywog can--and had lain all the time in a long, narrow,six-walled, waxen cell that was bed and room all in one. That is, wemight say, she had always so far in her life been in bed.
For when she was born in her cell, she was just a tiny white thing,without wings or legs, blind, and quite helpless. Really about all shecould do was to squirm a little in her horizontal cell, and keep openingher mouth when she was hungry to let somebody know she must be fed. Shewas immediately taken care of, however, by the nurse bees who kept nearthe nursery cells all the time except when they had to go to the pantrycells for more food for the babies. This food was flower nectar andpollen that had been brought into the hive by the active forager beesand stored in the pantry cells. The nurses made a sort of very good andnutritious jelly out of it which made Nuova grow very fast.
After she had been fed in this way for five days, she was many timeslarger than she had been at first. At the end of this time, however, thenurse bees did what might seem, at first thought, a rather heartlessthing. They made a thin cap or cover of wax over the open mouth ofNuova's cell, thus shutting her up tight in her bedroom. She was solarge that she almost filled her cell, but there was still a little roomleft, and this the nurses filled, just before putting the waxen cap onthe cell, with pollen and nectar mixed. For a few days Nuova lay quietlyin her dark, sealed-up cell, eating, when hungry, from the lump ofpollen and nectar which lay by her side. And then she stopped eating andsimply lay there in a sort of trance for several days more.
To Nuova herself all her life in the cell, from first day to last, musthave seemed little more than a sort of dream; a confused dream of notbeing able to walk or fly, or see or hear, but only to squirm a little,and be hungry and then be fed, and to feel dimly strange growing painsfrom the rapidly growing legs and wings when they began to come, and ofalways being rather comfortably warm and sleepy.
But this sleeping time had come to an end now; this helpless pollywogstage was finished for Nuova. And the light she saw through the bigeyes that had grown out on her head, during the last few days in theshut-up cell, was the faint but real light of a new day filtering itsway through the crowded hive. And the sounds she heard by means of themany tiny little hearing organs on the long, delicate, sensitivefeelers, or antennae, that had also grown out near her eyes and wereconnected by fine nerves with her brain, were the humming and murmuringof the thousands of industrious bees of the hive who were already atwork at their various duties all around her.
Nuova's awaking, then, was much more than the mere waking-up after anight's sleeping. It was the waking from a life of doing nothing butlying in bed and sleeping and eating and growing, to a life of takingcare of one's self and helping to take care of others; it was the wakingfrom a baby life to real bee life. For Nuova was now a full-grown bee,with all the wonderful body and all the wonderful instincts and the highintelligence that we know bees to have. But she was still shut up in hernursery cell.
The beginning of a new life for Nuova]
However, to escape from it was not difficult. She could see that thefaint light came in strongest through the capped end of the cell. Thewaxen cap was the thinnest part of the walls of her room, and as Nuova'shead was already lying close to the cap, it was a simple and easy matterfor her to begin biting it away with her two strong, little, trowel-liketeeth. In a few moments she had made a little hole in the cap, and thelight and sounds came in suddenly much brighter and louder than before,although the light was really not bright at all nor the sounds loud, aswe reckon such things. For the inside of a honeybee's house, the hive,is always pretty dark, and the sounds the bees make are not all loud,except occasionally when things are especially exciting and all the beesare buzzing together at once, or when a princess is about to come fromher nursery cell and both she and the old queen do a lot ofextraordinary trumpeting.
But to Nuova, biting her way out through the thin wax cap of her cell,having never heard nor seen anything at all through all of her babylife, things seemed very bright and noisy indeed. This, however,instead of frightening her, made her only the more anxious to get outand be a part of this exciting world around her, and so she worked awayas fast as she could, until suddenly the hole was large enough for herto crawl out. This she did, feeling, we may imagine, rather strange atusing her new legs for the first time, and finding her new wings allfolded up and rather damp and heavy. But out she came and, with a longbreath or two, she started to walk over the uneven surface of the waxencomb in which her nursery cell was situated. But after only a few stepsshe felt tired and limp. Indeed she _was_ limp, for all the outer partof her body, that was later to be firm and strong, was still rather softand damp and weak; her legs could not hold her up well yet, and herunexercised muscles needed a little practice to work together justright. So she soon stopped, trembling all over from her unwontedexertion, and let her big eyes gradually take in the strange sight abouther.