THE PASTORAL BEES. 85 
ean rest the cold has stiffened them. I go out in 
April and May and pick them up by the handfuls, 
their baskets loaded 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. I have also 
picked them up while rowing on the river and 
seen them safely to shore. It is amusing to see 
them come hurrying home when there is a thunder- 
storm 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 or grass. It is not probable 
that a bee ever gets lost by wandering into strange 
and unknown parts. 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, or of 
the bee-hunter’s box of honey on the hills or in the 
woods, he returns to it as unerringly as fate. 
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 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. Beside grape sugar, honey contains manna, 
mucilage, pollen, acid, and other vegetable odorifer- 
ous substances and juices. It is a sugar with a kind 
