---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Meldrum, G. G.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 22
number: 10
published: 1919-08
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Meldrum, G. G., "Consolation," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 10 (August 1919): 883.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera22010unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera22010unse
start_page: 883
end_page: 883
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1919-08)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera22010unse
  publication_year: 1919
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1919, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Consolation

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!

                       WHO APPRECIATES?                          885

 honey so it would be sweet enough and thick enough, and so it
 would never spoil. When the cells were full they were capped
over with wax.
     Sometimes she left her home too late to get back before
dark. When she did, her legs got stiff and her wings also, and
she had to sleep in the grass until the sun warmed her up in
the morning; for when she was cold she could not fly she     —
could hardly crawl.
     This little worker bee was hatched some time in May. Before August was half gone, her wings were getting ragged and
frayed and she could not work as well nor fly so far. She was
an old bee. Many a thorn had scratched and torn her pretty
 wings. Many a gust of wind, full of sand and sticks, had beaten
 her down to the ground. She had always come up again with
 her happy buzz, and in a hurry to get back to her task. She
 seemed to know that every hour the summer was passing away,
 and may be she knew that her own life would be short.
      One extremely hard, windy day she could only make one
 trip for honey.    She fell to the ground many times before she
 reached home. The end of one of her wings was broken, and
 she walked quite slowly and with some pain into the hive. But
 she could be heard buzzing long after dark Over the cell she
had just filled. She was still happy. The next morning she
 came out of the hive and tried to fly away for more honey, but
she only went a short distance and fell into the grass. She tried
several times but could not reach her home again.
      All alone, down there in the grass, she spent her last night;
and when the sun rose the next morning to bring joy and
warmth to the earth again, she was dead. But she had been
happy in the thought of the many cells of pure honey she had
made.
      This little bee might have been a queen, had nature needed
her for that, but bees must not all be queens, or there would be
no honey, and she knew how important her work was. Altogether she had made a spoon full of honey. All her lifetime had
been given to making a spoonful of honey; but it was excellent
honey, and it was a good life's work. Not many bees had done
better than she.
      At the table a little girl asked for some honey. It was so
clear and fresh and sweet and pure. She was given a spoonful;
and it was the very spoonful that our dear little bee had made
She tasted the honey and ate a little of it, but most of it was
left.  She said, "I don't like this honey. It's too sweet."
      The spoonful of honey was thrown into the sink and washed
into the sewer.
Rexburg, Idaho