Pooh’s eyes opened very wide.
“Bees,” he cried. “Thousands and thousands of them.”
“Oh, Pooh!” said Christopher Robin, one foot on the ground to steady the bicycle. “Aren’t they grand?”
“Should I ask them to come home?” asked Pooh.
“You could try.”
“Bees!” cried Pooh. The bees buzzed a little louder. “BEES!”
The buzzing of the bees grew not just louder but angrier and one of them landed on Pooh’s nose.
“I don’t think this is working, Pooh. We shall have to think of something else,” said Christopher Robin.
“I can only think of honey,” said Pooh sadly, “and having none.” He blew the bee off his nose.
They moved away from the swarm, and then stopped to think.
“Perhaps they don’t like our voices,” suggested Christopher Robin.
“I can’t help being growly,”saidPooh.“I’m a Bear.”
“We could play them some music,” said Christopher Robin. “‘The Homecoming Waltz,’ perhaps. I’ll go and get the gramophone.”
But the bees ignored “The Homecoming Waltz”; and when Christopher Robin played “God Save the King” the buzzing became Very Fierce indeed, and Pooh said: “Maybe it should be ‘God Save the Queen?’” but they didn’t have that.
Then, when Christopher Robin put on “You Are My Honeysuckle, I Am the Bee,” the buzzing got so ferocious that Pooh took the needle off the record in such a hurry that it made a big scratch.
“Bother!” said Pooh. “If they don’t like conversation and they don’t like music, and if they keep getting angry all the time, what are we to do?”
“We must hold a Crisis Meeting,” said Christopher Robin. “I’ll summon the others.”
So Christopher Robin rode off on his bicycle, while Pooh returned home to do an Emergency Check on his pantry. To his dismay, there were only two pots of honey left on the shelf, and one of them was nearly empty. He put them on the table, and he counted them this way and that, but it was not much fun counting to two (or one and a quarter), whichever way you did it. So he put his finger into one of them and took it out and sucked it. He thought he had never tasted anything so delicious in all his life.
The Crisis Meeting was held the next morning in a clearing in the Forest. Pooh explained that the bees had left the hollow oak; Owl described where they had ended up, and Christopher Robin suggested that they needed to be Enticed Back. Then there was silence, except for a chomping sound. Lottie, who was seated on the edge of the circle, was making daisy chains, biting through the stalks with her sharp little teeth.
“The thing about bees,” she said, when she noticed everyone was looking, “is that they like flowers. And they do what their Queen tells them to, so you need to get her on your side. You can tell which one the Queen Bee is because she makes a sort of humming noise.”
“Lottie,you are a remarkable rodent !” said Christopher Robin. “Do you have a plan?”
“Otters are not rodents but mustelids actually,” said Lottie. “But, yes, I am remarkable, and I do have a plan.”
Then she told them that bees like not only flowers but shiny, glittery things in general, so colourful decorations might entice them back. Everyone was asked to search their houses and the Forest for anything suitable with which to decorate the hollow oak.
Oh, how they toiled! Eeyore trotted to the very edge of the Forest, with Piglet on his back clinging tightly to his mane, and they returned with masses of bluebells and clover. Rabbit summoned as many Friends and Relations as could be brought together at short notice and instructed them to come back with anything that was glittery. Rabbit himself contributed a canteen of cutlery which he had been polishing and keeping for a special occasion. Kanga had taken on the job of arranging things, hanging spoons and forks around the entrance to the hollow part of the tree. Lottie slunk along dragging a diamond tiara.
“It’s not real, of course,” she explained to anyone who would listen (and some who would not), “but it comes from a very good house.”
Roo and Tigger found a box of marbles which they put into nets, and these too were attached to the tree branches like exotic fruit. Christopher Robin tied the model airplane to a twig as high up as he could reach.
By the time the sun had fallen behind the Six Pine Trees the work was finished, and everyone stood back staring in wonder at a tree unlike any that