In the hot, honey-scented, murmurous dark of the bees' nest, deep-hidden in the bank beneath the wild-rose thicket, the burly young queen, Bomba of the bumblebees, was seized with a sudden inexplicable restlessness. When she had emerged, two days before, from her cocoon-cell weak on her legs, bedraggled, and dazed by the busy crowding stir of the nest, she had been tenderly fed with thin honey by the great Queen-Mother herself, and cleaned and caressed by two or three of her sturdy little bustling worker-sisters. But as soon as she was strong enough to look after herself, and had found her way to the well-supplied communal honey-pots, she was amiably ignored, as everyone in the nest was working at high pressure. She had dutifully fallen to with the rest, and found her time well occupied in feeding the ever-hungry larvæ in their cells. But now this task no longer contented her. For the moment she did not know what she wanted. She went blundering here and there over the combs, shouldering the little workers aside, and paying
