Chefirovka is a large village not far from Tula. The people who live in Chefirovka grow vegetables and various kinds of fruit. They have domestic animals: cows, pigs, sheep, goats and even horses. You can see poultry there — hens, cocks, ducks, geese and turkeys. So they try to have everything they need to live well. Among the villagers there is one who likes bees very much; that is Oleg Rodin. Oleg Rodin has a hig house and an orchard in which there are many fruit-trees. The house stands on one of the hills. Between the hills there is a valley. It is very nice there. Oleg Rodin has a family. The family is large. Its members live and work together. As to Oleg he takes care of the bees htmself. He does not trust them to anybody. Oleg knows a lot about bees and he can tell you an interesting story about their life. Bees live in colonies. Each colony of bees has only one queen. One queen is enough for the colony. If more than one queen is left alive swarming will not take place. It is said about a bee: "It gathers honey all the day, From every opening flower." That is all wrong. Bees don't gather honey. None of the 10,000 different kinds of bees gathers honey. What they do gather is nectar, which is something quite different. This story you can hear from Oleg Rodin who likes to talk about bees, and certainly about his bees. Chefirovka is a village where one of the daughters of the famous Russian writer L. Tolstoy lived. There are still some people who met the writer and talked to him.
