The narrator introduces Christopher Robin and his teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, before telling a story about Pooh’s adventure trying to collect honey from bees. After finding a tree with a buzzing noise coming from it, Pooh concludes that only bees make such a noise, that bees are for making honey, and that “the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it” (6). Pooh climbs the tree, but before he reaches the beehive, a branch breaks, and he falls into a prickly gorse bush.

Pooh seeks help from Christopher Robin, who loans Pooh a blue balloon so that he can float up to the beehive. After rolling in mud to disguise himself as a rain cloud, Pooh floats up about 20 feet from the tree. However, the bees notice him and swarm. Christopher Robin announces that it looks like rain while Pooh sings a song about how he’s a cloud, but their ruses don’t fool the bees, so Pooh concludes that “these are the wrong sort of bees” (18).

To get Pooh down, Christopher Robin shoots the balloon with his popgun. For the next week, Pooh’s arms are so stiff from holding the balloon that he walks with them sticking straight up and is forced to blow flies off his nose with a pooh sound, which the narrator surmises is why he’s called Winnie-the-Pooh.