1 30 Hillside. 



make us look forward to purple hands and cheeks when 

 autumn comes. Already on some of the most forward 

 branches a few berries are becoming tinged with colour, but 

 such are very exceptional as yet. The blossom attracts 

 myriads of bees, and as we near the farm and its adjacent 

 cottages we see that among the cottagers is a fit successor 

 of the man described by Virgil, who 



" First among the swains was found 

 To reap the produce of his labour's ground, 

 And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crowned." 



Passing through the gate we pause before the trim garden 

 to watch the busy bee at its arduous labour ; for indeed the 

 colony is hard at work, and as the hives are partly made of 

 glass we can observe the habits and methods of work of the 

 bees. 



You would like to learn something about bees? Well, 

 there is so very much known about them that it is difficult 

 to determine what to select. It is of little use telling you 

 that there are three kinds of bees in each hive, the queen or 

 mother bee, the drones or male bees, and the neuters or 

 worker bees. Perhaps, though, it will interest you more to 

 hear that the latter are really females which are not 

 sufficiently well-developed to be capable of laying eggs, but 

 that occasionally one partially recovers this lost power, and 

 then is a great nuisance in the hive, her eggs always pro- 

 ducing drones. The workers are smaller than either the 

 queen or the drones. 



These are all workers that are passing in and out of the 

 hive. They really do the whole of the work pertaining to it, 

 and sometimes a single hive will contain as many as fifty 

 thousand of them. How do they work ? Well, first of all, 



