98 LABOUR IN VAIN. 
tainly was always on the wing whenever I 
saw him. 
Presently, after being once chased by a 
tom-tit, once nearly caught by a greenfinch, 
and once attacked by some big wasp thing, 
they let themselves down to a clay bank. 
The face of the bank was alive with females 
of our bee’s own kind, each rushing in or out 
of her own tiny burrow; and the air was 
alive, too, with males, dancing the maddest 
dizzy, humming dance that ever you saw. 
Our bee hurried straight to her own burrow, 
only to bump into another bee who was coming 
out. This bee was more slim, and black, with 
white spots on her body. She hurried away, 
and our bee, instead of killing her, as she 
ought to have done, rushed in and placed her 
store of honey and pollen beside the egg she 
had already laid. 
Then she cemented the walls up, and came 
away happy. But she might have saved her- 
self the trouble, for the other bee was a 
‘cuckoo,’ who had already laid an egg in there 
herself, the grub from which would eat up all 
the honey and the pollen intended for our 
bee’s own grub, 
