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Updated: May 17, 2025


There were tall, white birch trees and trembling aspens, and ash trees grew on the shore. Everything was just as it had been in his dream. At the foot of the trees tall grasses nodded, butterflies played in the sunshine, and humble-bees buzzed from flower to flower. The birds were singing, but he could not understand what they said, and therefore he knew that it was not a dream.

He was motionless, even while he felt that the vague longing and yearning which had possessed him hitherto was now mysteriously taking some unknown form and action. The murmuring ceased. The humble-bees' drone again became ascendant a sudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While he had stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity and stolen away.

It sang a thin, sweet song in Lynette's little rose-tipped ears. And innumerable larks carolled, building spiral towers of melody on fields of buoyant air. And suddenly a human note mingled with their music and with the thick drone of the little, black-and-grey humble-bees that feasted on the corn-bottles. And Lynette's visionary companion was upon the instant gone.

Hence, it would continually be more and more advantageous to our humble-bees, if they were to make their cells more and more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the cells of the Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding surface of each cell would serve to bound the adjoining cells, and much labour and wax would be saved.

Two humble-bees, Bombus thoracicus and B. violaceus, are found on the pampas; the first, with a primrose yellow thorax, and the extremity of the abdomen bright rufous, slightly resembles the English B. terrestris; the rarer species, which is a trifle smaller than the first, is of a uniform intense black, the body having the appearance of velvet, the wings being of a deep violaceous blue.

Among the humble-bees, for instance, the workers do not dream of renouncing love, whereas our domestic bee lives in a state of perpetual chastity.

Bates writes: "They do not proceed in that methodical manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from one part of a tree to another in the most capricious manner." I have observed humble-bees a great deal, and feel convinced that they arc among the most highly intelligent of the social hymenoptera.

Humble-bees are commonly supposed to carry the palm in attitudinizing; and it is wonderful to see the grotesque motions of these irascible insects when their nest is approached, elevating their abdomens and two or three legs at a time, so that they resemble a troupe of acrobats balancing themselves on their heads or hands, and kicking their legs about in the air.

Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp-stool by a humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite.

The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm; and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs!

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