Far off past the meadow, the thunder started up. A low grumble, then another one, closer.
Betty heard it first. She was one of the older bees in the Rose colony, the one the others sent out to look for things, because she’d flown further than most and she didn’t get lost. She was halfway home with news of a good patch of clover when the wind hit the old oak, and the oak, which had been leaning for years, gave up.
“The tree’s coming down! Out, everybody out!” Betty didn’t scream it so much as it came out of her all in a rush, and the bees poured out of the hive in a stream just as the whole thing cracked and went over into the grass.
Then it was quiet, except for the thunder.
The bees clumped together on a fence post and looked at the wreck of their home. Somebody was crying. A little bee named Pip pressed himself into Betty’s side and would not stop shaking. “It’s so loud,” he kept saying. “Why is it so loud.”
Betty didn’t tell him it was fine. It wasn’t fine, the hive was in pieces and rain was coming. What she said was, “Stay next to me,” and Pip did.
She’d seen a storm flood this meadow once before, years ago. She remembered it. And she knew the soft green grass everyone loved would be underwater by morning, so sleeping there tonight was out, no matter how much the others wanted to.
They wanted to. When Betty said they had to leave and find a hollow tree before dark, the grumbling started, and it wasn’t only the sky. Why move now. We’re tired. Betty’s just being fussy, she always thinks the worst. A storm never flooded anything before.
Betty’s feelings hurt at that, a little. But she’d seen the water come up before and they hadn’t, so she kept flying and told them to follow, and enough of them did that the rest came too. Pip flew right at her wingtip the whole way, still shaking, flying anyway.
They found a hollow tree by dusk, dry inside and just big enough. The storm came after dark. It was every bit as loud as Pip feared, the thunder banging right overhead, but from inside the tree it landed differently, more like a big noise happening to somebody else, somewhere out there in the wet. Pip listened to it for a long time. Then, somewhere in the middle of a boom, he fell asleep.
In the morning they flew out to the meadow for breakfast and stopped dead in the air, all of them.
There was no meadow. Just brown water where the grass had been, the clover gone, a few flower heads floating. If they had slept there they would not have woken up.
Nobody said anything about Betty being fussy after that. They flew back to the hollow tree and started building, and Pip worked next to Betty all day, and if the thunder came again some other night, well, he’d know a bit better what to do with it.
MORAL: Being scared and being brave are not opposites. Pip shook the whole way and flew anyway, and Betty listened to the grumbles and did the right thing regardless.
The thunder in this story never actually touched a single bee. That’s the part worth remembering the next time it rolls over your own house, loud as anything and unable to reach you, smaller and further away the moment you’re somewhere safe and dry. If your little one likes Betty and Pip, there are more small stories like this one to read together, and a few about growing up and the ordinary adventures that come with it.
