27 December 2025

On Christmas Eve 1925, one hundred years ago, AA Milne published the first of his stories about a ‘bear of little brain’ who lived in the Hundred Acre Wood along with his assorted friends. The original story was called, ‘The Wrong Sort of Bees’ and appeared in the London Evening news. It featured the first of Winnie-the-Pooh’s poems:

Isn’t it funny

How a bear likes honey?

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

I wonder why he does?

The poem begins with a rhetorical question and ends with a scientific one. ‘I wonder why a bear likes honey?’ The poem is preceded by the bear’s scientific enquiry. He hears some buzzing. ‘That buzzing noise means something.’ he says and by a process of deduction, he concludes that  bees  are  making  honey so that he can eat it!

He climbs the tree to get the honey. He falls down. He rolls  in the mud to disguise himself as a dark cloud. He gets a blue balloon to  camouflage himself as he’s carried up  into  the sky. Meanwhile Christopher Robin walks up and down with an open umbrella to fool the bees. This strategy doesn’t work. The bees turn aggressive. Christopher Robin shoots the balloon and Pooh makes a soft landing.

Nothing works. From one perspective, it all seems a waste of time. But for Pooh, it has been purposeful and he has reached a useful conclusion. They were ‘the wrong sort of bees’. Through his enquiry he has brought a lot of fun to his readers and an endearing resonance within our own lives. Our solutions don’t always work  but life is richer, happier, friendlier pursuing  the question and being a ‘bear of little brain’.