There is not one of the creatures with which man has surrounded himself that seems so much like a product of civilization as the honeybee. Indeed, a colony of bees, with 5 their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public spiritedness, their thrift, their complex economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town.

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Our native bee, on the other hand, the "burly, dozing bumblebee," affects one more like the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He luxuriates in time of plenty and he starves in time of scarcity. He lives in a 15 rude nest or in a hole in the ground, and in small communities. He builds a few deep cells or sacks in which he

stores a little honey and beebread for his young, but as a worker in wax he is of the most primitive and awkward.

The Indian regarded the honeybee as an ill omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact, she was the epitome of 5 the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honeybee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that 10 blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get by hook or by crook.

She comes from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives best in the most fertile and long-settled lands. Yet the 15 fact remains that the honeybee is essentially a wild crea

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ture, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and thither many do go, in spite of the care and watchfulness of the beekeeper.

Apparently every swarm of bees before it leaves the parent hive sends out exploring parties to look up the future home. The woods and groves are searched through and through, and no doubt the privacy of many a squirrel and many a wood mouse is intruded upon. What cozy 25 nooks and retreats they do spy out, so much more attractive than the painted hive in the garden, so much cooler in summer and so much warmer in winter!

One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is: a tree with a heart of comb honey, a decayed oak or "maple with secret chambers where lies hidden the wealth. of ten thousand little freebooters, great nuggets and 5 wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from every field and wood about.

When a bee brings pollen into the hive he advances to the cell in which it is to be deposited and kicks it off as one might his overalls or rubber boots, making one foot 10 help the other; then he walks off without ever looking behind him; another bee, one of the indoor hands, comes along and rams it down with his head and packs it into the cell as the dairymaid packs butter into a firkin.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous 15 campaign of an army; the ranks are being continually depleted, and continually recruited. What adventures they have by flood and field, and what hairbreadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on an average, about four or five thousand per month, or one hundred 20 and fifty per day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by spiders, benumbed by cold, crushed by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and in many nameless ways cut off or disabled. In the spring the principal mortality is from the cold. As the sun declines they get 25 chilled before they can reach home. Many fall down outside the hive, unable to get in with their burden. One may

see them come utterly spent and drop hopelessly into the grass in front of their very doors. Before they can rest the cold has stiffened them. I go out in April and May and pick them up by the handful, their baskets loaded 5 with pollen, and warm them in the sun or in the house, or by the simple warmth of my hand, until they can crawl into the hive. Heat is their life, and an apparently lifeless bee may be revived by warming him.

It is amusing to see them come hurrying home when 10 there is a thunderstorm approaching. They come piling in till the rain is upon them. Those that are overtaken by the storm doubtless weather it as best they can in the sheltering trees and grass. It is not probable that a bee ever gets lost by wandering into strange and unknown parts. 15 With their myriad eyes they see everything; and then their sense of locality is very acute-is, indeed, one of their ruling traits. When a bee marks the place of his hive, or of a bit of good pasturage in the fields or swamps, he returns to it as unerringly as fate.

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Honey was a much more important article of food with the ancients than it is with us. As they appear to have been unacquainted with sugar, honey, no doubt, stood them instead. It is too rank and pungent for the modern taste; it soon cloys upon the palate. It demands the appetite of 25 youth, and the strong, robust digestion of people who live much in the open air. It is a more wholesome food than sugar, and modern confectionery is poison beside it.

Besides grape sugar, honey contains manna, mucilage, pollen, acid, and other vegetable odoriferous substances and juices. It is a sugar with a kind of wild natural bread added. The manna of itself is both food and medicine, and the pungent vegetable extracts have rare virtues.

The Emperor Augustus one day inquired of a centenarian how he had kept his vigor of mind and body so long ; to which the veteran replied that it was by "oil without and honey within."

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Hence it is not without reason that with the ancients a 10 land flowing with milk and honey should mean a land abounding in all good things; and the queen in the nursery rhyme, who lingered in the kitchen to eat "bread and honey," while the "king was in the parlor counting out his money," was doing a very sensible thing.

Italy and Greece, in fact all the Mediterranean countries, appear to have been famous lands for honey. Mount Hymettus, Mount Hybla, and Mount Ida produced what may be called the classic honey of antiquity, an article doubtless in no wise superior to our best products.

bumblebee: also called humblebee. See Emerson's poem, p. 132. beebread flower pollen, which forms the food of the young bees. -epitome (è pĭt'ò mê): a compact representation; a work reduced to a small ᄒ size.freebooters: robbers. - stood: served. manna: sweetish yellow flakes which exude from some trees and shrubs. centenarian: one who is a hundred years old. —land flowing with milk and honey: see Exodus iii. 8. Hymettus (hi mětítés): a mountain in Greece. — Hybla (híb ́la): Hybla was in Sicily. - Ida: a mountain in Asia Minor.

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