IN THE FIELD 



205 



interested he is, if you show him a bee ou a flower and tell 

 him that this little creature gathers the honey he likes so 

 well! He will never forget what you told him, and will 

 want to know more. And we older boys still see in our 

 imagination the big hollow tree, the forest, the streams, the 

 hills that we saw, when we went bee-hunting long, long ago. 

 The honeybee is one of the very few insects which man 

 has, so to speak, domesticated ; but when this was done, we 

 do not know. Into this country the honeybees were intro- 

 duced from Europe, probably not so very long after the 



FIG. 42. THE GERMAN, BLACK, OB BROWN BEE. 



a, drone; b, queen; c, worker; d, a piece of comb with some open and 

 some closed cells ; e, a queen cell. All somewhat reduced. 



first permanent settlements. In the large forests, where 

 the old hollow trees offered them so many natural hives, 

 many escaped swarms returned to a wild state. These wild 

 bees slowly advanced westward before the White Man, and 

 about the close of the last century they had reached the 

 Mississippi. It is said that the Indians called them " Eng- 

 lish flies," and hated them as the advance guard of the 

 White Man himself. They have now spread over the con- 

 tinent, and are found wherever conditions permit their ex- 

 istence. 



