The Life of the Bee 



sealed with the seal of white, incorrupti- 

 ble wax. Building ceases, births diminish, 

 deaths multiply ; the nights lengthen, and 

 days grow shorter. Rain and inclement 

 winds, the mists of the morning, the am- 

 bushes laid by a hastening twilight, carry 

 off hundreds of workers who never re- 

 turn ; and soon, over the whole little 

 people, that are as eager for sunshine as 

 the grasshoppers of Attica, there hangs 

 the cold menace of winter. 



Man has already taken his share of the 

 harvest. Every good hive has presented 

 him with eighty or a hundred pounds of 

 honey ; the most remarkable will some- 

 times even give two hundred, which rep- 

 resent an enormous expanse of liquefied 

 light, immense fields of flowers that 

 have been visited daily one or two thou- 

 sand times. He throws a last glance 

 over the colonies, which are becoming 

 torpid. From the richest he takes their 

 3S6 



