The Queen Bee (Grimm)
Division into chapters is editorial.
The journey begins: Three brothers and the saved creatures
Two kings' sons once went out in search of adventures, and fell into a wild, disorderly way of living, so that they never came home again.
The youngest brother, called Simpleton, set out to find his missing siblings.
When he found them, they mocked his simplicity and doubted his ability to succeed where they had failed. The three brothers traveled together and encountered various creatures. At an anthill, the two elder brothers wanted to destroy it to watch the ants scatter in terror, but Simpleton protected them.
The enchanted castle and the three impossible tasks
Next, they came to a lake where the elder brothers wanted to catch and roast ducks, but again Simpleton intervened. Finally, they found a bee's nest overflowing with honey. The brothers planned to smoke out the bees to steal their honey, but Simpleton once more refused to allow harm to the creatures. Eventually, the three brothers arrived at an enchanted castle with stone horses in the stables and no humans visible. They explored the empty halls until they reached a door with three locks and a small window. Through it, they saw a little grey man sitting at a table.
After calling him three times, he finally responded, opened the locks, and led them to a feast. He provided them with bedrooms for the night. The next morning, he showed the eldest brother a stone table inscribed with three tasks that must be completed to break the castle's enchantment.
The first task: Finding the thousand pearls
The first task required finding a thousand pearls belonging to a princess, scattered beneath the moss in the forest. If even one pearl was missing by sunset, the searcher would turn to stone. The eldest brother searched all day but found only one hundred pearls and was transformed into stone. The second brother fared slightly better, finding two hundred pearls, but met the same fate. When Simpleton's turn came, he struggled with the difficult task.
It was, however, so hard to find the pearls, and he got on so slowly, that he seated himself on a stone, and wept.
As he sat weeping, the King of the ants appeared with five thousand ants.
Remembering how Simpleton had saved their lives, the tiny creatures quickly gathered all the pearls into a heap, completing the first task successfully.
The second task: Retrieving the key from the lake
The second task required retrieving the key to the king's daughter's bedchamber from the bottom of the lake. When Simpleton approached the water, the ducks he had previously saved came to his aid.
They dove deep into the lake and brought the key to the surface, allowing Simpleton to complete the second task as well.
The third task: Identifying the true princess
The third and most difficult task involved identifying the youngest and most beloved of the king's three sleeping daughters. The princesses looked identical and could only be distinguished by the different sweetmeats they had eaten before falling asleep: the eldest had eaten sugar, the second syrup, and the youngest honey.
The Queen Bee, whom Simpleton had protected from fire, came to his rescue.
Then the Queen of the bees, which Simpleton had protected from the fire, came and tasted the lips of all three, and thus the King's son recognized the right princess.
Breaking the enchantment and the happy ending
With the completion of all three tasks, the enchantment was broken. Everyone awakened from their magical sleep, and those who had been turned to stone returned to their natural forms. Simpleton married the youngest princess, and after her father's death, he became king. His two brothers married the other two princesses, completing the happy ending.