THE BEE’S STORY 
81 
—drones, we call them—and throw 
them out of the hive.” 
“How cruel!” exclaimed the ant 
and wasp together. 
“It may seem so to you, whose 
males are not long-lived like ours, 
but our hive was so full of them 
that they took too much room, and 
a great deal too much honey. If we 
had not driven out the lazy fellows, 
we should soon have been turned 
out ourselves. The next thing I did 
was to set out after propolis.’ Has 
either of you ever heard of such a 
thing?” 
The ant and wasp both declared 
they never had. 
“It is a sweet-scented, sticky stuff, 
which we get from the buds of 
