"Let the guards guard, and the jester jest, Let Saggia clean, and the new queen wed, Let all the bees do all they did, For life is doing what we're bid. Oh, life is doing what we're bid. Ha-ha!"
Saggia felt a little anxious on Beffa's account, for his song seemed bitter, and she saw that the guard was looking both puzzled and sour as she listened to it. So Saggia spoke to her hurriedly.
"The odor from our full pantries comes strong from the hives this morning," she said. "I hope it won't attract the Black Bees."
"Oh, the Black Bees," said the guard, superiorly. "Let them come. We'll show them how robbers are treated."
Just as the guard finished speaking, a commotion began on the other side of the platform, and Nuova saw a large black-and-yellow-striped creature with a long spear lunging fiercely toward the entrance of the hive. It was a Yellow Jacket. She knew it at once, because she had heard some of the nurse bees one day talking about these fierce black-and-yellow-banded robbers that sometimes fought their way into the hive to steal honey.
The guard near Saggia and Beffa hurried across the platform brandishing her lance. But already three or four other guards had thrown themselves on the intruder and were beating it back, striking it viciously with their lances. The Yellow Jacket made a good fight, but the bee Amazons were too many for it. It was wounded, began to weaken, and soon was hustled back off the platform and on through the grass behind a near-by bush.
The guard who had been talking with Saggia came back proudly to her, still brandishing her long lance.
"That's the way we do it," she said. "And a Yellow Jacket is stronger than a Black Bee."
"Yes," replied Saggia, wagging her old head wisely, "but not stronger than ten Black Bees, or a hundred, and that is the way _they_ come."
As Saggia finished speaking, the guards who had driven the Yellow Jacket away returned boisterously, and joining all the other guards on the platform, formed in a line, and half-marching, half-dancing, went through some military maneuvers. While they were doing this, another lot of guards came out of the hive, and forming in a line opposite them, also went through the martial dance. At the end of it all the guards who had been outside marched into the hive, while the new ones remained outside on the platform. It was the "relief of the guard."