30 The Honey-Makers 



feel if not see the anxiety depicted on its countenance. 

 But all was of no avail. It could not get the nectar that 

 way ; it must conform to the law 

 of the flower, or go hungry. 



It tried again and again walking 

 over and about the right opening : 

 but the flower, strong and stiff, 

 met its stupidity by an equal 

 obstinacy, until finally Madame 

 Bombus solved the vexing rid- 

 dle, forced her corpulent person 

 beneath the stigmatic spring, 

 stretched her neck and extracted 

 nectar to her heart's content. 

 Emerging from the entrance to 

 the emptied nectary, she unhesitatingly, and no doubt with 

 a beam of triumph in her eye, forged across the flower 

 and into another nectary entrance. From that time for- 

 ward she lost no precious moments when iris blossoms were 

 in question. 



This raised in the observer's mind the query as to 

 whether the need of becoming acquainted with the method 

 of ransacking a flower for nectar might not account for the 

 well-known habit of bees in collecting exclusively from one 

 variety of flower during a given time. They find a flower 

 which is abundant and whose nectar pleases them, they 

 know just how to proceed, so it is a time-saving method to 

 hasten from one flower to another like it. 



Every observant bee-keeper has noticed the experimental 

 manner in which bees search for nectar. 



Their instinct as a rule leads them to seek the flowers for 

 honey, though sometimes they do not seem even to know 

 flowers without first investigating their little world and dis- 

 covering them. Mr. Root says he has watched bees in the 



