"The Mail's" . . . "WONDERLAND" PAGE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 10 March 1944, Page 3

"The Mail's" . . . "WONDERLAND" PAGE

A Letter From Alice . ..

Dear Boys and Girls,— “Ow!” cried Alice as a horrible black bee came swooping down angrily on her arm and left a little prickle which felt as if it had dug in for miles. She waved both arms frantically, but the bees only seemed to zoom round more and more, humming a fierce battle song. White Rabbit glared through his sting-proof veil and told her in no uncertain terms that if she went on like that all the bees from the six hives in front of them would take off and attack, and there would be umpteen thousand of them against two. Also, if she cared to scrape the sting out sideways, it would stop hurting and the poison would come out with the sting, so there! But the bees were worried about their honey and were determined to guard it with their lives and dozens of stings, if necessary, so Alice and White Rabbit were obliged to retreat for a while till things calmed down. White Rabbit has six hives in Wonderland, and has become very proud of his bees. “You get to know each one,” he says proudly. “I have Clementine, my special, Claude, and one very fierce striped one, I call Alice — I didn’t really call her after you,” he added hastily, as Alice began to look extremely annoyed. He had talked so much about his bees that at last Alice asked in a small voice if she could come and watch him open one of the hives and inspect its inmates and contents. But Alice had expected to see dozens of quiet little bees busily making honey. She certainly didn’t expect thousands and thousands of demons to be milling round over the frames, and thousands more to fly out the front door to protect their honey and friends inside. They stood some distance away, dressed in strange hats with veils tucked down their shirts, and the bees gradually settled down, whereupon the two intruders crept up to the hive again, and White Rabbit bravely lifted frame after frame into the air and looked at them professionally. “There’s a queen cell.” he explained, and Alice peered at the little cup shaped piece of wax. ‘‘The bees make these specially for queen eggs, and feed the grubs which hatch into queen bees. It’s all very interesting,” he added unnecessarily, and Alice murmured “Isn’t it!!” and looked fearfully at a small “Spitfire fighter” bee which was circling her veil suspiciously. After a while, though, she forgot the stray, angry fellows and became absorbed in White Rabbit’s exhibits. There was a gorgeous smell of new honey, and in some of the cells there were tiny eggs, while in others there were baby grubs being fed by bigger bees, while all over the frames were hundreds of bees, working busily. Alice wasn’t quite certain what they were being busy about, but they had busy looks about them. “Tell you what, Alice,” said White Rabbit, as he put the top on the bee hive again, “I may be able to let you have a hive in the spring, would you like to have one?” Alice threw up her hands in excitement, quite forgetting that if she did it was asking for the bees to grow angry and attack. As she and White Rabbit ran as fast as they could from the following squadrons of winged monsters she cried, “I just can’t wait for the spring to come,” and White Rabbit cried just as loudly, “You’ll have to have a lot more sense or else you’ll be stung to death!” With lots of love till next week, from your foolish, much-stung pal, ALICE.