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Updated: May 17, 2025
Before the sun was up the swallows had left their beams in the cowshed and twittered out into the air. The rooks and wood-pigeons and doves had gone to the corn, the blackbird to the stream, the finch to the hedgerow, the bees to the heath on the hills, the humble-bees to the clover in the plain.
And he dreamed a dream. The whole mountain was a green wood with lovely trees and odorous flowers. Birds were singing, bees and humble-bees buzzing, and butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. But all by itself and a little aside stood a tree which he did not know; it was more beautiful than all the rest; it had several stems, like a shrub, and the branches looked like lacework.
Little Bluewing held up her lips and kissed the old man, and immediately his face changed and he looked fifty years younger. "I have kissed a child, I have grown young again," said the gardener. "You owe me no thanks. Farewell!" Little Bluewing went to the wood where the nuts grew. The silver-linden was rustling in the breeze, and the humble-bees hummed and buzzed round its blossoms.
Bevis pulled a handful of long green rushes, and then he picked some of the burrs from the tall burdocks; they stuck to his fingers when he tried to fling them away, and would not go. The great thistles were ever so far above his head, and the humble-bees on them glanced down at him as he passed.
Many of our orchidaceous plants absolutely require the visits of moths to remove their pollen-masses and thus to fertilise them. Hence I have very little doubt, that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear.
The wasps were working at the pine boughs high overhead; the bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers; swarming on them, they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went wandering among the ferns in the copse and in the ditches they sometimes alight on fern and calling at every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple thistles, and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers.
Many species pollinate themselves in the absence of bees; from these the insects are to be excluded. Others have the stamens and stigmas widely separated and have to be pollinated artificially. Still others do not lend themselves to such operations, but have to be left free to the visits of bees and of humble-bees, this being the only means of securing seed from every plant.
In both races the fraternal idea has undergone equal and magnificent development, save in one point alone, wherein it achieves no further advance among the Meliponitae than among the limited offspring of the humble-bees. In the mechanical organisation of distributed labour, in the precise economy of effort; briefly, in the architecture of the city, they display manifest inferiority.
Newman says, "near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice."
The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I do not remember that I ever killed one.
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