THE PASTORAL BEES. 86 



can 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 hi 

 Heat is their life, and an apparently lifel 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 huriying 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 fata 



Honey was a much more important article of 

 food with the ancients than it is with us. As they 

 ippear 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 



