The Mushrats ave Building 
honey are sealed in the combs, and the colony is safe 
should the sun not shine again for a year and a day. 
But here is Nature, in these extra pounds of honey, 
making preparation for me, incapable drone that I 
am. I could not make a drop of honey from a whole 
forest of linden bloom. Yet I must live, so I give 
the bees a bigger gum log than they need; I build 
them greater barns; and when the harvest is all 
in, this extra store I make my own. I too with the 
others am getting ready for the cold. 
It is well that Iam. The last of the asters have 
long since gone; so have the witch-hazels. Allis quiet 
about the hives. The bees have formed into their 
warm winter clusters upon the combs, and except 
“when come the calm, mild days,” they will fly no 
more until March or April. I will contract their 
entrances, —put on their storm-doors. And now 
there is little else that I can do but put on my own. 
The whole of my out-of-doors is a great hive, 
stored and sealed for the winter, its swarming life 
close-clustered, and covering in its centre, as coals 
in the ashes, the warm life-fires of summer. 
I stand along the edge of the hillside here and 
look down the length of its frozen slope. The brown 
Il 
