Lecture X
bees and flowers
Whatever thoughts each one of you may have brought
to the lecture to-day, I want you to throw them all
aside and fancy yourself to be in a pretty country
garden on a hot summer’s morning. Perhaps
you have been walking, or reading, or playing, but
it is getting too hot now to do anything; and so you
have chosen the shadiest nook under the old walnut-tree,
close to the flower-bed on the lawn, and would almost
like to go to sleep if it were not too early in the
day.
As you lie there thinking of nothing in particular,
except how pleasant it is to be idle now and then,
you notice a gentle buzzing close to you, and you
see that on the flower-bed close by, several bees
are working busily among the flowers. They do
not seem to mind the heat, nor to wish to rest; and
they fly so lightly and look so happy over their work
that it does not tire you to look at them.
That great humble-bee takes it leisurely enough as
she goes lumbering along, poking her head into the
larkspurs, and remaining so long in each you might
almost think she had fallen asleep. The brown
hive-bee on the other hand, moves busily and quickly
among the stocks, sweet peas, and mignonette.
She is evidently out on active duty, and means to
get all she can from each flower, so as to carry a
good load back to the hive. In some blossoms
she does not stay a moment, but draws her head back
directly she has popped it in, as if to say “No
honey there.” But over the full blossoms
she lingers a little, and then scrambles out again
with her drop of honey, and goes off to seek more
in the next flower.
Let us watch her a little more closely. There
are plenty of different plants growing in the flower-bed,
but, curiously enough, she does not go first to one
kind and then to another; but keeps to one, perhaps
the mignonette, the whole time till she flies away.
Rouse yourself up to follow her, and you will see
she takes her way back to the hive. She may perhaps
stop to visit a stray plant of mignonette on her way,
but no other flower will tempt her till she has taken
her load home.
Then when she comes back again she may perhaps go
to another kind of flower, such as the sweet peas,
for instance, and keep to them during the next journey,
but it is more likely that she will be true to her
old friend the mignonette for the whole day.
We all know why she makes so many journeys between
the garden and the hive, and that she is collecting
drops of honey from each flower, and carrying it to
be stored up in the honeycomb for winter’s food.
How she stores it, and how she also gathers pollen-dust
for her bee-bread, we saw in the last lecture; to-day
we will follow her in her work among the flowers, and
see, while they are so useful to her, what she is
doing for them in return.
