good to eat^ while others may show their friendship by preventing our 

 insect enemies from injuring us or our crops. 



Let us see if we can not divide them into two classes. In one class 

 we will put those that produce something we can eat, or wear, or that 

 we can use in some other way. In the second class we will put those 

 which help us by destroying our insect enemies. 



Now, which ones shall we place in the first class? There are only 

 a few, like the honey bee, the silkworm, the cochineal bug and per- 

 haps the blister beetles. 



The second cl^ss will not be very large either. Here we might 

 name the lady bugs, a number of the larger ground beetles, and two 

 or three families of little flies, which are commonly called parasites. 



Fow let us talk about some of the members of the first class for a 

 little while. Let us take first the honey bee. How many kinds of 

 material do we get from the honey bee? Two — honey and wax. Of 

 course, every farmer's boy ought to know that. Now, where is the 

 honey made? Do the bees gather it from flowers? A good many peo- 

 ])le think so, but let lis see. The next time you find a clover blossom 

 pull out a single flower and suck out the sweet substance which it con- 

 tains. Is it honey? No, you say it does not have any of the peculiar 

 honey taste about it. It is simply a sweet substance called nectar. 

 It is not honey until it has been manufactured by the bees. This is 

 such a ditflcidt operation that I think you will have to wait till you 

 get older before attempting to learn how it is done. 



No«-, can you tell where the bees get the wax? Do you think they 

 gather that from plants also ? A good many hundred years ago people 

 thought that the bees used the little yellow balls, which we sometimes 

 sec clinging to their hind legs, for maldng wax, but now we know 

 tlie little yellow balls are made of pollen which the bee gathers from 

 flowers for the purpose of feeding its young and that the wax is 

 secreted from their own bodies in much the same way as a cow secretes 

 milk. Tlie wax forms in little scales on the imder side of their bodies 

 and when they want to use it they pick it ofl! with their feet and after 

 mixing it in their mouths, they use it in building their combs and in 

 making the little pockets in which they store the honey. 



How many of you know how many lands of bees there are in a 

 hive? If your father keeps bees you have probablj' heard him talk of 

 the "queen," the "workers" and the "drones." It is very easy to dis- 

 tinguish between these different kinds of bees if we observe them a 

 little closely, but I doubt if many of you have done this because, as 

 a rule, people do not care to get very near to bees, especially when 

 the}' are at work. You need not feel afraid of them, however, for the 



