AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



21 



but not sharpers, and I fail to see why a 

 woman with ordinary tact and skill, can- 

 not make a success of bee-keeping as 

 well as a man. — Read at the Northern 

 Illinois Convention. 



Tie Honey Bee— A Prize Essay, 



MISS KATE RICHMOND. 



In point of antiquity at least the bee 

 is deserving of honor, since it in all 

 probability, was a native of the garden 

 of Eden. I wonder, in those halcyon 

 days of the early purity and innocence 

 of man, when the long and beautiful 

 days must have seemed to the 2 human 

 inhabitants an endless paradise of glori- 

 ous Summer, if the beautiful silence was 

 ever displaced, or perhaps, made more 

 restful, by the "humming" of the bee, 

 as it winged its drowsy flight from 

 blossom to blossom gathering the honey 

 that must have been spread with such a 

 lavish hand in that queen of gardens. - * 



Amongst the ancient Egyptians, the 

 bee was the hieroglyphical emblem of 

 royalty. I do not know whether it 

 became the emblem of royalty, to them, 

 from the fact that something analogous 

 to a monarchy, has frequently been 

 erroneously supposed to exist in a bee- 

 hive. True, there is one of the members 

 of the hive known as the queen, who, at 

 certain seasons, is the object of particular 

 regard on the part of all the other 

 members of the hive, but only because 

 the instincts of all its members, are 

 variously directed towards her, at that 

 time, as one indispensable to the objects 

 for which the bee community exists ; but 

 beyond the fact of having this attend- 

 ance upon her, those, who make a study 

 of the subject, tell us that there is no 

 evidence whatever, of anything like 

 authority exercised by the queen. 



To modern nations the bee furnishes an 

 example of all that is inspiriting and 

 patriotic. The patriotism is there at 

 any rate. You do not find the members 

 of a bee community taking exception to 

 the way in which the affairs are man- 

 aged. There is no clamoring for 

 promotion, but each insect fills the place 

 for which it was intended, without 

 questioning. They all co-operate tov/ards 

 the common benefit of the community, 

 and agree that ''Union is strength," 

 since in repelling invasion, or avenging 

 aggression, the whole community become 

 as one, inasmuch as their several energies 

 are directed to the one object of the 

 preservation of their hive. And as to 

 the inspiration, no one can deny that an 



interview with a bee that means business, • 

 is decidedly and intensely inspiriting. 

 The interviewer is inspired with feelings 



of well, they need not be recounted 



here, as every one who has had the 

 pleasure (?) of an interview with the 

 bee, can supply the ellipsis to suit him- 

 self. 



As a mathematician, the bee can prove 

 Euclid mistaken, when he said "There 

 is no royal road to learning " since it is a 

 geometrician par excellence, and reached 

 that state, too, without any of those 

 weary interviews in which the human 

 student questions the advisability and 

 accuracy of the great mathematician's 

 geometrical plans, but, in which the 

 student invariably comes out second 

 best. 



Look, for example, at the mathematical 

 ingenuity exhibited by the bee in the 

 formation of the cells in the comb of the 

 hive. They are hexagonal in form, the 

 shape which, as every mathematician 

 knows, will combine the greatest economy 

 of space and material, since the hexagon 

 being perfectly regular, there can, there- 

 fore, be no interstices between, and 

 consequently every atom of space is 

 Geconomized. 



Besides the hexagon, the bee constructs 

 otiier mathematical figures of various 

 forms that are necessary to the strength 

 and continuance of the hive. And then 

 in respect of the construction of these 

 mathematical figures, the bee is always 

 ahead of the human student again, for 

 it never makes mistakes. All its pro- 

 ceedings are founded on sure and 

 infallible principles, and you never find 

 a bee unwise enough to question those 

 principles. The bee furnishes a lively 

 testimony to the proverb "Familiarity 

 breeds contempt." With what supreme 

 and wholesome contempt for the insect 

 are you permeated after an interview, in 

 which the bee, to say the least of it, has 

 been decidedly familiar ; and how feel- 

 ingly you remark to yourself that you 

 will keep it at a distance evermore. 



What a lesson is furnished to us, too, 

 in the provident industry of the bee. 

 Observe, v/ill you, how instinct, which is 

 merely a blind impulse as far as the bee 

 is concerned, leads it to provide for a 

 possible future, to care for its young, to 

 provide, in fact, in every way for the 

 healthful continuance of the community ; 

 while man, whose superiority over the 

 insect is asserted in the fact that he is 

 provided by the Creator with reason, the 

 noblest of all God's good gifts to man, 

 will look upon to-day only as the day 

 before to-morrow, and defer being 

 prudent to old age, looking forward to a 



