THE BUSY BEE 



IN these autumn days the garden, unless the 

 succession of flowers has been very knowingly 

 arranged, acquires a rather bedraggled and empty 

 look. The summer blooms are all past their best, 

 and the autumn glory is still to unfold itself. 

 But sunflowers of all sorts make a very glowing 

 display, even if they are rather full blown, and 

 where sunflowers are, there may be found the busy 

 bee. When, however, I examine the bees in my 

 sunflowers, I am forced to the ungenerous thought 

 that business is not their distinguishing trait. 



Here, for example, is a black " bumbee." It 

 rests on the disc of a ripe sunflower, so ripe that 

 it has curled into the similitude of what a female 

 person calls an iron-holder. About the bee there 

 is a strange and uncharacteristic leisureness. It 

 has tarried on this bloom, to my knowledge, for 

 half an hour, and to say that it is gathering honey 

 all the day is an exaggeration of politeness. It 

 makes just enough movement to show that it is 

 alive. At long intervals it withdraws its pro- 

 boscis from one full-blown floret and thrusts it into 

 another, but the whole action is performed with 

 airs of boundless time to spare. Perhaps this 

 bee is a bad character, a shirker among a busy 



