Bumblebee

“ So much comes off on his back that after visiting a flower or two he becomes annoyed; clings to a leaf with his fore legs while he thoroughly brushes his back and wings with his middle and hind pairs, and then collects the sticky grains into a wad on his feet which he presently kicks off with disgust to the ground. Examine a jewel-weed blossom to see that the clumsy bumblebee's pollen-laden back is not so likely to come in contact with the short five-parted stigma concealed beneath the stamens, as a hummingbird's slender bill that is thrust obliquely into the spur while he hovers above. ”

“ We all marvel at the industry of the honey bee; how tirelessly it buzzes from flower to flower, from each gathering a drop of the nectar, with which it fills its cells; but we do not always realize the double duty it is doing, for it is a most reliable and active agent for the propagations of a great many plants. Many butterflies, bees, and even beetles unconsciously accomplish the same result, and it is now conceded that each has special colors that are attractive to them. For instance, the bumblebee has a strong preference for blues and purples. ”

“ It travels above ground and below ground, and in some soils will run out the grass. It knows how to allure the bumblebee, however, and has honey in its heart. I think it a lovely flower, though it is queer; and it is a delight to the scientific botanist, in the delicate perfection of its methods and means of fertilization.
The greatest beauty of this flower is in late autumn, when it springs up densely in shaven fields. I have seen, during the last week in October, fields entirely filled with its exquisite sulphur-yellow tint, one of the most delicate colors in nature ”

“ Thus each bloom is fertilized with the pollen from some other, insuring cross-fertilization. The bumblebee takes his toll in honey, but when he comes to back out he has trouble. If you will listen close by you will hear him buzzing and burbling like an overheated teakettle as he struggles. The arching filaments of those fuzzy stamens have tangled his short legs and he is shaking the pollen out of the antlers all into the fur of his yellow overcoat. Before he gets out he is right mad and loaded with pollen for the fertilization of the next bloom. ”

“ On his departure they resume their original position, to protect both nectar and pollen from rain and pilferers whose bodies are not perfectly adapted to further the flower's cross-fertilization. The common bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) plays a mean trick, all too frequently, when he bites a hole at the base of the blossom, not only gaining easy access to the sweets for himself, but opening the way for others less intelligent than he, but quite ready to profit by his mischief, and so defeat nature's plan. ”

“ It was a feast to which not only honey-bees came, but bumblebees, wasps, hornets, flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumblebee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee. ”

“ When you see the clumsy bumblebee clambering over and pushing his way into a clover blossom, you may be sure that he is getting well dusted with pollen and that the next blossom which he visits will secure a full share on its stigmas.
When flowers fit themselves to be pollinated by insects they can no longer use the wind and are helpless if insects do not visit them. They therefore cunningly plan two ways to invite the visits of insects. ”

“ Yes, the guest-bees, who visit their friends the year round, let their hosts wait upon them, and never help to keep anything clean or to collect nectar and pollen. Mrs. Guest-Bee even lays her eggs in Mrs. Bumblebee's nest, and when the guest babies hatch out, it is not their mother, but Mrs. Bumblebee, who feeds them from the food she has stored up for her own children. The guest-bees are so lazy that no little baskets are found on their legs for carrying pollen. ”

“ Any fly, whether clad in drab or motley, is admitted to the burrow directly she makes herself useful to the community. The mimicry of the bumblebee fly, which was said to be one of the most conclusive cases, is, after all, a mere childish notion. Patient observation, continually face to face with facts, will have none of it and leaves it to the armchair naturalists, who are too prone to look at the animal world through the illusive mists of theory. ”

“ Very few are adapted to tongues so long and slender that the bumblebee cannot help himself to their nectar; but one almost never sees him about the butterfly-weed. While other bees, a few wasps, and even the ruby-throated hummingbird, which ever delights in flowers with a suspicion of red about them, sometimes visit these bright clusters, it is to the ever-present butterfly that their marvelous structure is manifestly adapted. Only visitors long of limb can easily remove the pollinia, which are usually found dangling from the hairs of their legs. ”

“ And Aunt Polly Woodchuck agreed, before she went off towards her home under the hill, that there were queer goings-on over there in the meadow.
Later she sent her nephew Billy to tell Mrs. Field Mouse that on her way home she had remembered the name of the big family. It was Bumblebee.
"They must be an odd lot," Mrs. Field Mouse remarked to her husband. "Farmer Green's meadow is becoming more unfashionable than ever. And I shall never regret having moved away from there."
So that was Buster Bumblebee's first home—the old house in the meadow. ”

“ Imagine the news circulating like wildfire through the hives. Honey-bees have little time or patience to hunt up solitary and retiring flowers. They want masses of bloom, fields of blossom, having a large work to do—a city to build, a host to feed.
The bumblebee is the good angel of the woodland flowers, the visiting priest—or shall I say priestess—to all outlying parishes, calling at every ledge and gorge and dell where is any colony of blossoms or a lone settler or two. The bee discovers the pale pendent blossoms of the checkerberry [Pg 81] under the leaves and almost prone upon the ground. ”

“ Why do oaks or chestnuts so often spring up where a pine or hemlock forest has been cleared away? Why does lightning so commonly strike a hemlock tree or a pine or an oak, and rarely or never a beech? Why does the bolt sometimes scatter the tree about, and at others only plow a channel down its trunk? Why does the bumblebee complain so loudly when working upon certain flowers? Why does the honey-bee lose the sting when it stings a person, while the wasp, the hornet, and the bumblebee do not? How does the chimney-swallow get the twigs it builds its nest with? ”

“ This heather here, now fully opening in the warmer sun of the southern counties—it is still but in the bud among the Scotch hills, I doubt not—specially lays itself out for the bumblebee, and its masses form about his highest pasture-grounds; but the butterflies—insect vagrants that they are—have no fixed home, and they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting; he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest fellow ”

“ In the first family all the species are solitary of habit, while in the second both solitary and social species are found. True honey-bees are found wild in this country, and the species most nearly allied to them with us is the common bumblebee (Bombus) , of which genus upward of fifty species or more occur in North America. This bee, or rather a queen of this species, hibernates all winter, but early in the spring makes her nest. ”

“ And although everybody said that Buster Bumblebee was a drone, he never seemed to mind it in the least.
[Pg 6] II
CHIRPY CRICKET'S ADVICE
If the summers in Pleasant Valley had been longer perhaps the honey-makers in Buster Bumblebee's home would have taken a holiday now and then. But they knew that every day that passed brought cold weather that much the nearer. So they never once stopped working—except to sleep at night. And, like Farmer Green himself, they felt that they must not waste any of the precious daylight by lying abed late in the morning. ”

“ It is related that when Darwin was confronted with the evidence of this flower as against one of his theories he insisted that such an insect must live—even before it had been discovered! Again, other flowers keep their petals closed, and the petals must be forced apart in order to get the honey by a strong bumblebee. ”

“ English midsummer nature is the other extreme of stillness. The long twilight is unbroken by a sound, unless in places by the "clanging rookery." The British bumblebee, a hairy, short-waisted fellow, has the same soft, mellow bass as our native bee, and his habits appear much the same, except that he can stand the cold and the wet much better (I used to see them very lively after sundown, when I was shivering with my overcoat on) , and digs his own hole like the rabbit, which ours does not. ”

“ Where light is absent, color goes for nothing. Once, therefore, that she has entered the cavern, the bumblebee fly derives no benefit from her yellow bands, which are supposed to be her safeguard. Whether garbed as she is or otherwise, it is easy for her to effect her purpose in the dark, on condition that she avoids the tumultuous interior of the wasps' nest. So long as she has the prudence not to hustle the passers by, she can dab her eggs, without danger, on the paper wall. ”

“ The bumblebee is the only insect that is large enough to reach the pollen in this blossom, and so its doors will open only to him. Botanists tell us that all this great family, to which belong the various peas blossoms and their cousins, were once five-petaled plants, but natural selection has brought about their present shape, which is an admirable 30protection against the depredations of small insects that could only rob but could not fertilize the flowers
Blue is the favorite color of the honeybee, and next to blue he prefers red. ”

“ No bee except the guest-bee and drone is ever idle. The happy-go-lucky bumblebee, which buzzes so near us on these warm summer days, is always on the go, although she is easy-going and happy-go-lucky. ”

“ Our bumblebee, so far as I have observed, invariably appropriates a mouse-nest for the site of its colony, never excavating a place in the ground, nor conveying materials for a nest, to be lined with wax, like the European species. Many other of our wild creatures take up with the leavings of their betters or strongers. Neither the skunk nor the rabbit digs his own hole, but takes up with that of a wood-chuck, or else hunts out a natural den among the rocks. ”

“ When bees, for example, are out for food on windy days, and must make frequent stops for refreshment among the flowers, they will be found going against the wind, possibly to catch the whiffs of fragrance borne on it that guide them to feast, but more likely that they may rise and alight readily. One always sees bumblebees conspicuous among the obedient plant's visitors. After the anthers have shed their pollen - and tiny teeth at the edges of the outer pair aid its complete removal by insects - the stigma comes up to occupy their place under the roof. ”

“ Where the short tube is thickened, the bee finds her foothold while she forces her tongue between the anther tips. The nectar is well concealed and quite deeply seated, thanks to the rigid cone. Few bee workers are flying at the shooting star's early blooming season. Undoubtedly the female bumblebees, which, by striking the protruding stigma before they jar out any pollen, cross-fertilize it, are the flower's benefactors ”

“ Ladybug's words did not offend Buster Bumblebee in the least.
"No doubt you know best," he told her. "But how can I build a house? I've never worked in all my life. And I don't intend to begin now."
"Why not get some one to build a house for you?" she asked him.
"I never thought of that!" he cried. "Whom would you suggest?"
"I know the very person!" Mrs. Ladybug told him. "He's a Carpenter Bee; and he lives in the big poplar by the brook. [Pg 58] Perhaps you know him. Johnnie Green calls him Whiteface," she said. "They do say he's a very skillful workman." ”

“ Because bramble flowers show greater executive ability than the raspberries do, they flaunt much larger petals, and spread them out flat to attract insect workers as well as to make room for the stamens to spread away from the stigmas - an arrangement which gives freer access to the nectar secreted in a fleshy ring at the base. Heavy bumblebees, which require a firm support, naturally alight in the center, just as they do in the wild roses, and deposit on the early maturing stigmas some imported pollen. ”

“ As he works outward, this anther, drawn downward on its hinge, plasters his back with yellow granular pollen as a parting gift, and away he flies to another lady's slipper to have it combed out by the sticky stigma as described above. The smallest bees can squeeze through the passage without paying toll. To those of the Andrena and Halictus tribe the flower is evidently best adapted. Sometimes the largest bumblebees, either unable or unwilling to get out by the legitimate route, bite their way to liberty. ”

“ Kerner, Kronfield, Forbes, and Della Torre have seen bumblebees fly for hours from one flower to another of the same kind, ignoring other species which grew mixed with them. To such persistent and intelligent industry our field and meadow flowers, at least in part, owe their endless variety of shape and color, and as long as bees live there will be fresh modifications for us to wonder at. ”