Beet

“ Some of the Beetles, especially the large ones, are so gorgeously colored and so richly polished that they are imitated, as closely as Art can imitate Nature, in precious stones and worn as ornaments. ”

“ Bees and Spiders, Earwigs, Beetles and Snails, Dragon-flies, Grasshoppers, and Butterflies are familiar enough to us all; yet how many realise how 'fearfully and wonderfully' they are made? What a marvellously complex weapon is the 'sting' of the bee! What a wonderful 'rasp' the snail possesses! How many can tell how an insect smells, and where its organs of taste and hearing lie? ”

“ It is a pretty, harmless beetle that gardeners like to see around their plants. Children repeat the rhyme when they find the beetle in the house and always release it to “fly away and save its children.” ”

“ There it is that the beetles have their paradise. In loose heaps of stone, often collected to clear a stony pasture; in the wooden palings used to separate alp from alp; in the decaying lumber of the pine-forests, beetles both small and great are absolutely swarming. ”

“ An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.
She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid—
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.
We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!" ”

“ The short-coat beetles are not the only ones that take lodgings. Perhaps you may hear your mother say that “the moths have got into her furs.” If she looks at the furs, she may find, not only moths, but small beetles. They are having a fine time eating up the fur! ”

“ one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one. ”

“ Does a beetle spend most of its life on the wing, like bees and flies? How might the body covering and the structure of the outer wings affect or determine the beetle's habits, even against its will? Are the feelers or are the eyes of your specimen more easily distinguished? Upon which of the special senses does it seem to place most dependence? Is your kind of beetle good for anything, either in nature or in human affairs? Make a statement regarding what good or what harm it may do. THE DAMSEL FLY LARVA Materials. ”

“ Quantities of small bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles - over a hundred species of insects - come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, when food is so scarce. ”

“ Beetle lays her eggs in safe places.
The legs and feet of the beetle are made in joints. They have hairs on them. The legs are so made and set that they cannot spread out as far as those of spiders, wasps, flies.
Now here is Mr. Beetle’s head. It has two jaws and two feelers, the mouth, and the eyes. There is [Pg 78] a little horn shield over the mouth. In fact, the whole beetle is in a snug horn coat. We may call this coat a suit of armor.
The eyes of the beetle are like those of the fly. Very many eyes are set in what seem to be two big eyes. ”

“ The hard black bodies of beetles are composed of it, and, wonderful to relate, of this substance the downy wings of the butterfly are made. You will remember that in the chapter on the eye of the bee we saw that the facets have a beautiful appearance; they too are made of chitine, as are the tendons, legs, hairs, membranes, and many other parts of the body.
The abdomen of the queen and of the worker is divided into six rings or belts, but the drone, having a somewhat [37] larger body, has seven. ”

“ Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail. ”

“ —Your thirty-six dissections must have cost you a deal of time and labor,—the Master said.
—What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor?—answered the Scarabee.—It is my meat and drink to work over my beetles. My holidays are when I get a rare specimen. My rest is to watch the habits of insects, those that I do not pretend to study. Here is my muscarium, my home for house-flies; very interesting creatures; here they breed and buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and die in a good old age of a few months. My favorite insect lives in this other case; ”

“ Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages.
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. ”

“ All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-coloured buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts—they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves—and all the other trees in turn. ”

“ A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass. ”

“ Is the bee more sentient than the flower? Or, is the flower which provided the nectar and placed the nectar-guides just at the right place on the bright blossoms, as special allurements for the senses of the bee, the more to be admired for its intelligence? One by one the bee opens the flowers, which were so fresh and beautiful at sunrise. When he goes to his nest in the grass at evening, they will all have been drained of their nectar, and the petals will be wilted by the sun. ”

“ Green of the dawning sky, dear to behold.
“When the lime is in blossom the bees are busy,
Summer has come with her honey-sweet mouth;
The lime is in bloom and the hive it is silent,
Come little bees from the North and the South!
”Gather your store when the red sun is shining,
Gather the harvest so that you may feast,
The hive is nigh empty, the Queen she is weeping,
Come little bees from the West and the East.“
I saw one go in the pale of the dawning,
In a fair May-time a-telling the bees,
Tapping the hive there she told of men dying,
Many a dear name she called to the breeze. ”

“ They climb to the air and the sunlight again in grasses and ferns and airy little plants. They blossom into flowers, eye-gladdening, honey-yielding, color-mad clumps of bloom, from which not alone the bee drinks sweets. ”

“ Many a plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. ”

“ Seek only to draw forth the hidden sweet,
In all the varied human flowers we meet,
In the wide garden of humanity,
And like the bee, if home the spoil we bear,
Hived in our hearts it turns to nectar there. ”

“ We have seen the queen lay her eggs, the little bees hatch out, the nurse bees feed them, the foragers come in and dance their whirling dervish dance and unload their baskets of pollen and sacs of honey, the wax-makers hang in heavy festoons and make wax, the carrying bees carry the wax to the comb-builders, and the comb-builders build comb of it, the house-cleaners and the ventilators clean house and ventilate, and the guards stopping intruders at the door. ”

“ See how the beeches which have sprung up on the declivity recline in nearly the angle of the hill, so that their upper branches are only a few feet from the soil; reminding us, in the midst of warmth and beauty, of the rough winds of winter and the blasting influence of the spray. The insect denizens of the heath and the wood are all on wing; see, there is the red bee, and there the blue butterfly, and yonder the burnet-moth with its wings of vermilion, and the large birdlike dragon-fly, and a thousand others besides, all beautiful and all happy. ”

“ The bee keeper sometimes finds his bees idle, when the flowers are in bloom in profusion, the sun shining brightly, and, to the superficial observer, everything indicating honey in abundance. And yet the bees are dormant, and scarcely a one flying about the hives, notwithstanding the hives and boxes are full of them. The truth of the matter is, there is no honey in the flowers, although they are in full bloom. ”

“ Is it not odd that bees can make so much wax from their small wax-bags?
Did you ever find in the earth the nest of a humble-bee? The humble-bee queen works. Humble-bees dig holes in the earth with their front feet.
[Pg 48]
When they have made a hall and a room, they make a nest. It is of grass, or leaves, or hay, cut fine. They lay eggs in the nest.
They make honey in large combs. The combs are more soft and dark than those which the hive bee makes. Field mice and moles eat these bees and their combs. ”

“ Agriculture: 70% of agricultural area used for permanent hay and pasture; main products—livestock and dairy products, turnips, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, wheat; 85% self-sufficient; food shortages—grains, fruits, vegetables ”

“ I want to say, that in speaking of entertaining the little feathered angel birds, in my flower garden, I also entertain them in beneficent ways unseen by me. For bees and birds are necessary and valuable for your flowers. The bees have panniers on their legs where they carry the pollen to the hives, and many a tiny bit of pollen falls from these well-packed panniers to fall into the heart of the blossom from which the bee is gathering nectar. ”

“ The balls are full of honey. The wax and honey of this bee are of a dark color.
One kind of bee has no sting. Would you like that bee best?
The tree bee is also called the wild bee. This bee takes an old tree with a hollow trunk. It cleans out more and more of the old, dead wood, and builds nice combs.
A tall tree may be full of combs, from root to top. In such a tree, more than one swarm will live and work. Each swarm has its queen, and keeps in its own place.
Smoke makes bees fall, as if dead. People drive bees off with the smoke from a fire of wood or paper. ”

“ Certain as it may seem that the bees communicate with each other, we know not whether this be done in human fashion. It is possible even that their own refrain may be inaudible to them: the murmur that comes to us heavily laden with perfume of honey, the ecstatic whisper of fairest summer days that the bee-keeper loves so well, the festival song of labour that rises and falls around the hive in the crystal of the hour, and might almost be the chant of the eager flowers, hymn of their gladness and echo of their soft fragrance, the voice of the white carnations, the marjoram, and the thyme. ”

“ The bees are the most useful of all, and we now see what service they render to plants, for when a little worker dips into a flower in search of nectar, her body becomes covered with pollen. It may be that the next flower she comes to is one in which the stigma is ripe, so that the bee, as she pushes her way in, rubs her pollen-covered body against it, [111] and thus the flower is fertilised by pollen from another plant. When a bee is nectar-gathering, you will notice that she always keeps to one kind of plant on each journey, just as the pollen gatherers do. ”

“ The stout and bustling humble-bee leads with a deep bass rumble as it blunders from blossom to blossom on the bramble or stirs the dust amidst the tree roots as it searches for something, the bee alone knows what. ”

“ The bee and the butterfly take their pollen and their honey, and the strange moths so curiously coloured, like the curious colouring of the owls, come to them by night, and they turn towards the sun and live their little day, and their petals fall, and where is the soul when the body decays? ”

“ Show me the bee-keeper and I will show you a poet; a lover of waters that go softly like Siloa; with the breath of sage and pennyroyal about him; an observer of nature, who can handle his bees without veil or gloves. Only a few men keep bees,—only philosophers, I have found. They are a different order utterly from hen-men, bee-keeping and chicken-raising being respectively the poetry and prose of country life, though there are some things to be said for the hen, deficient as the henyard is in euphony, rhythm, and tune. ”

“ Agriculture: animal husbandry predominates with milk and dairy products accounting for 37% of farm income; main crops—grains, sugar beets, potatoes; 100% self-sufficient in grains and potatoes, 85% self-sufficient in sugar beets; food shortages—oils and fats, tropical products ”

“ Thus, again, we are struck with the fact that the more closely we examine the organs of any segment of the body of the insect, the more reason do we find to admire the skill, and the care for His creatures, manifested by the infinitely wise and the infinitely good Maker of them all. Beauty, adaptation, perfection, are the words which are continually suggested to our minds by the contemplation of the structure of the bee. ”

“ When she finds the place she wants she puts some honey and pollen there, and lays an egg on the little pile. After a while the larvas come out of the eggs. When they have eaten what they want they make a cocoon, and curl up for a rest while they are being made into little workers. You know, the bee family is made up of the mother bee, who is called the queen, and many fathers, who are called drones; all the rest are workers. ”