CHAPTER XV 



THE HONEYBEE AND THE SUGAR-BOWL 



"Eat thou honey because it is good." 



Solomon. 



OF all the intensive folk, born for the comfort 

 of the garden home, surely the honeybee ranks 

 first. While associated in most minds with the 

 home in the country, it is by no means of purely rural 

 inclinations. It can flourish in the suburbs; not only 

 that, but in a limited way it has begun to follow the 

 crowd to the congested urban centers. San Francisco, 

 piled up on the tip of a sandy peninsula, harbors hun- 

 dreds of colonies of bees, most of them in backyards, 

 but some of them on fire-escapes of apartment houses, 

 and some on roofs of skyscrapers. The same is true 

 of New York and other cities. Sometimes hives are 

 installed in offices, the waiting-rooms of physicians, 

 particularly; and dentists say that they sooth the 

 irritated nerves of their patients partly by their mur- 

 murous humming, and partly because the interesting 

 insects induce forgetfulness of self. There are beau- 

 tiful city homes where bees are kept in the rooms in 

 glass hives, with an aperture at the rear permitting 

 ingress and egress. The bees are no more trouble than 

 goldfish, and require less care than a canary. 



At first thought, one would imagine that bees could 



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