XII 

 HONEY 



Every pleasant summer day the bees are up and away 

 at daybreak in search of nectar. 



" Humming-moths and humming-birds seldom set foot 

 upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, 

 and reach forward as if they were sucking through straws. 

 But bees, though as dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers 

 with profound cordiality, and push their blunt, polleny 

 faces against them, like babies on their mother's bosom. 

 And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature 

 clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at 

 once, on her warm Shasta breast." Thus Muir. And he 

 might have said it of every flowery knoll this fair land over. 



In May the apple blossoms are rifled and their sweets 

 gathered into the hives, to be fed mostly to the young. 



In June the red raspberries in the north tempt the bees 

 from all other blooms and afford such abundant nectar 

 that they begin to fill the upper stories with pure honey by 

 which we are to benefit. 



But the honey of the first flowers belongs to the bees, 

 and that firom the maple, the willow, the alder, and the 

 dandelion we are not as a rule allowed to taste. Our turn 

 comes when the raspberries and white clover begin to 

 bloom. 



Then is laid by great store of surplus sweets. As fast 

 as a flower is drained of its nectar by the eager bees, its 

 glands pour out more, so as long as a plant remains in 

 bloom it yields as a rule tribute to the honey-seekers. 



