Snowdrops and Honeybees (first draft)

from Busy in the Sun: A Big Old Garden Story

In a very old tree, in a very deep hole just above a broken-off branch, lived a honey bee. Well, that isn’t quite true. Thirty thousand bees lived in that hole, where they had built a beautiful home with everything they needed for the winter. But Honeybee Worker number 28,579 was excited, because winter was ending, there was so much work to do, and she was finally grown up enough to do it!

(And because she was almost the newest, most excited worker bee, and because twenty-eight thousand, five-hundred and seventy-nine is very hard to say, from now on we will call her Newbie.)

Newbie the worker bee hatched last autumn, just before an early winter locked the world in ice. All through the long, dark months her older sisters had fed her flower pollen and kept her warm so that she could grow. But winter had been so long that the honey closets were getting empty. Even more seriously, the pollen supplies were running out.

With nothing to feed new baby bees, their sweet queen had stopped laying eggs. She was waiting until the worker bees could go out and collect fresh pollen once again.

Today the clouds still promised snow, and ice still clung to the edges of puddles on the roads and sidewalks. But where the feeble sun shone, the brittle cold had melted from the soft places of the soil, and the smell of earth rose gently into the chill air. It was time for the first scouts to leave the hive.

Listen to the Story