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 
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