"Can you blame 'em, father?" said a second voice. "It's rotten
with Wax-moth. See here!"

Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke
away in rustling flakes of ashy rottenness.

"Number Four Frame! That was your mother's pet comb once,"
whispered Melissa to the Princess. "Many's the good egg I've
watched her lay there."

"Aren't you confusing pod hoc with propter hoc?" said the Bee
Master. "Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees let them in." A
third frame crackled and rose into the light. "All this is full
of laying workers' brood. That never happens till the stock's
weakened. Phew!"

He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also crumbled to
pieces.

The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone-grubs
squirm feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had nursed on that
frame, well knowing their work was useless; but the actual sight
of even useless work destroyed disheartens a good worker.

"No, they have some recuperative power left," said the second
voice. "Here's a Queen cell!"

"But it's tucked away among--What on earth has come to the little
wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of cell-building."