You Can Never Tell With Bees

So says Winnie the Pooh in an old story.

First of all he said to  himself:  "That  buzzing-noise
means  something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just
buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If  there's
a  buzzing-noise,  somebody's  making  a buzzing-noise, and the
only reason for making  a  buzzing-noise  that  I  know  of  is
because you're a bee."

Then  he  thought another long time, and said: "And the
only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey."

And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason  for
making  honey  is so as I can eat it." So he began to climb the
tree.

He got high up in the tree and almost reached the honey (and the bees) before a branch broke underneath him and he fell all the way to the ground again (but don’t worry, he landed on a gorse-bush).

Forthwith, Pooh thought of the idea of floating up on a balloon to get the honey…

"It's like this," he said. "When  you  go  after  honey
with  a  balloon,  the  great thing is not to let the bees know
you're coming. Now, if you have a  green  balloon,  they  might
think  you  were only part of the tree, and not notice you, and
if you have a blue balloon, they might think you were only part
of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is:  Which  is
most likely?"

"Wouldn't  they notice you underneath the balloon?" you
asked.

"They might or they might not,"  said  Winnie-the-Pooh.
"You  never  can  tell  with bees."

Brief aside: Now that I am almost a beekeeper, anything that I read about bees interests me much more than it ever could have before and also any bee joke I find very amusing.

Pooh Bear  floated  gracefully  up into the sky, and stayed there --
level with the top of the tree and about twenty feet away  from
it.
"Hooray!" you shouted.
"Isn't that fine?" shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you.
"What do I look like?"
"You  look  like  a  Bear holding on to a balloon," you
said.
"Not," said Pooh anxiously, " -- not like a small black
cloud in a blue sky?"
"Not very much."
"Ah, well, perhaps from up  here  it  looks  different.
And, as I say, you never can tell with bees."

You can read the full story, the beginnings of Pooh Bear, here.