200 Bees mid Bee- Keeping. 



to the cell in which it is to be deposited, and kicks it 

 off as one might his overalls or rubber boots, making 

 one foot help the other ; then he walks off without ever 

 looking behind him. Another bee, one of the indoor 

 hands, comes along and rams it down with his head and 

 packs it into the cell, as the dairymaid packs butter into 

 a firkin."* 



And again : 



" I have a theory that when bees leave the hive, 

 unless there is some special attraction in some other 

 direction, they generally go against the wind. They 

 would thus have the wind with them when they 

 returned home heavily laden, and with those little 

 navigators the difference is an important one. With 

 a full cargo, a stiff headwind is a great hindrance. 

 But fresh and empty-handed, they can face it with 

 more ease."-f- 



The acquaintances and friends the bees have been 

 the medium of bringing me are many; and from the 

 many conversations I have had with them — conversa- 

 tions as pleasant and obliging and neighbourly as they 

 were informing — I have been led to form far higher 

 ideas of the English peasant's power of observing and 

 of reasoning than I had done before. They greatly err 

 who fancy the agricultural labourer, in our part of the 

 country at all events, is a mere clod, without power of 

 observation, perception, sensitiveness, or delicacy. In 

 some things, the truth is, he puts his town-brother to 

 shame, only to strangers is he shy, and is little apt at 

 expressing himself in such a style as they could under- 

 stand. The bees with us, at all events, are a good bond 

 of union, doing not a little to break down some of the 

 prejudices of caste and class, a service for which I am not 



* " Locusts and Wild Honey." t Pepacton, p. 104. 



