104 MORE ABOUT WHAT THE BEES DO. 



make you feel, more than ever, what wonderful little 

 insects our friends are. 



Generally speaking, animals, birds, and insects do 

 not go very far in order to obtain food for their 

 young. In order to supply their own wants, and 

 when they have no home with young, they will, as 

 we all know, go far and wide ; and many birds will 

 migrate from one country to another ; but when they 

 have young — as the bees have in their hives — their 

 journeys are limited. Rooks and pigeons will go 

 some distance ; so will foxes, amongst animals ; but 

 I imagine there is hardly any animal, bird, or insect 

 that will go so far as the little bee. 



The way in which this has been found out has 

 been by marking bees in a particular way, and then 

 going to some distant favourite place, and there 

 finding the marked bees. 



'A gentleman, wishing to test this fact, dusted 

 with fine flour his bees as they emerged from a hive. 

 Then, driving to a heath five miles distant, which he 

 knew to be much frequented by the insects, he soon 

 found many of those which he had sprinkled at 

 home.'* 



But even more wonderful than this, cases have 

 been known of bees actually going seven miles from 

 home on the same errand. At the same time, how- 

 ever, we may say that two or three miles is, perhaps, 

 quite the limit within which the bees can collect honey 

 with much profit. The stores collected from a greater 

 distance cannot repay the extra labour and time 

 expended. 



* Harris. 



