The Busy Bee 1 1 7 



feed on it, while their more useful cousin goes 

 unfed. 



On about every head of every stalk in the 

 buckwheat field you can see one of these 

 golden-banded robbers. Away in the deep 

 woods in the creamy flowers of the basswood, 

 they are humming and tonguing the stamens 

 for the hidden sweet. All through the sum- 

 mer days, and well into the autumn, the 

 goldenrod will pay toll to the hive. No 

 roadside flower that contains sweet is too 

 mean or insignificant to escape the notice of 

 this industrious honey-getter. While men 

 idle she works, taught by some marvelous in- 

 tuition that soon the flowers will fade, and 

 snow cover the ground and that if the honey- 

 bees would not perish like the bumble-bee, 

 they must be storing up food for winter. 



A great many erroneous ideas are held by 

 the general public as to the position of the 

 queen-bee in the colony. In the minds of 

 many she is the master mind, and a queen of 

 absolute power. But this is not so, while 

 she is a royal queen, and her kingdom is a 



