Spelling bee

“ The tongue is extremely elastic, and is capable of being moved in any direction at will. Some of the hairs with which the tongue is clothed are of use for feeling, but most of them are for a different purpose altogether. When a bee pushes her head into the corolla of a flower, her tongue sweeps from side to side. If there is any nectar there, it sticks to the hairs of the tongue in tiny droplets, and in this way it is collected. ”

“ By closely watching and comparing the specimens I see with plates in the books on bees I have learned to distinguish many of the different species. It is one thing, however, to see a bee figured in a book, or to look through a dried collection of them; it is far more delightful to see the bright, beautiful creature itself, instinct with life, busily at work or play. These solitary bees evidently enjoy flirting in the gayest manner, and their soft, downy bodies and brilliant colours only show to real advantage whilst alive and lighted up by sunshine. ”

“ The bees were the next. I remembered then seeing different kinds on the Earth, though I had never made a study of them. Here they all came trooping, magnified into great terrible-looking monsters out of a dream: the big black bumble bee, the little yellow bumble bee, the common honey bee, the bright green, fast-flying, slender bee. ”

“ And my nest to new cover with hay.
Pretty Bee, do not buzz about over the flower,
But come here and play with me, do:
The Sparrow won't come and stay with me an hour
But stay, pretty Bee—will not you?
O no, little lady, for do not you see,
Those must work who would prosper and thrive,
If I play, they would call me a sad idle bee,
And perhaps turn me out of the hive.
Stop! stop! little Ant—do not run off so fast,
Wait with me a little and play:
I hope I shall find a companion at last,
You are not so busy as they. ”

“ Peculiar circumstances are supposed to exist, in order to render the use of the adjective, in this connexion with the noun, necessary and proper. But in ordinary instances, as the narration of events, the noun would precede the adjective, and oftentimes, particularly where a second allusion to objects previously named became necessary, the compound expressions would be used. Thus instead of saying the yellow bee, wäyzahwizzid, would distinctly convey the idea of that insect, had the species been before named. ”

“ He was too much exhausted to take the trouble of cutting any fern or seeking for moss, but just threw himself down under a tree, when exactly above his head he heard a great buzzing as a bumble-bee alighted on a honeysuckle branch. 'What are you doing here?' asked the bee in a cross voice; 'at your age you ought to be safe at home.'
'I am running away from the mermaid,' replied the boy; but the bee, like the lion and the bear, was one of those people who never listen to the answers to their questions, and only said: 'I am hungry. ”

“ A bumble bee, yellow as gold
Sat perched on a red-clover top,
When a grasshopper, wiry and old,
Came along with a skip and a hop.
“Good morrow” cried he, “Mr. Bumble Bee,
You seem to have come to stop.”
“We people that work,” said the bee with a jerk,
“Find a benefit sometimes in stopping,
Only insects like you, who have nothing to do
Can keep perpetually hopping.” ”

“ FLAPPER LOVE has crept out of her sealéd heart As a field-bee, black and amber, Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start. Mischief has come in her dawning eyes, And a glint of coloured iris brings Such as lies along the folded wings Of the bee before he flies. ”

“ With what singular persistency of purpose does that diminutive and laborious creature, the Bee, turn to account every minute of sunshine! The construction of her cell is a marvel of insect architecture ”

“ They talked a while, and then they sang some songs together.
"It's story time, isn't it?" said Grandpa by and by. "And who is going to get stung tonight?" he asked, winking at Joyce.
"I hope I don't," she laughed, remembering the time the bee had stung her on the first day of her visit.
"No one shall be stung tonight," said Grandma. "I have a very sweet little bee to tell you about. And because the little girl in my story listened to its buzz, it made honey for her all her life. Its name is Bee Loving; and it can do things that nothing else in the world can do. ”

“ The drop of honey which they then covered has in no instance returned to the extremity of the tongue; it has always passed towards the mouth, and doubtless entered that orifice itself. It is therefore very certain that the bee imbibes its honey by lapping, and that it never passes through the aperture which has been supposed to have been seen at the extreme apex of the tongue. ”

“ And how does the preponderance of butterflies in the upper regions of the air affect the colour and brilliancy of the flowers? Simply thus. Bees, as we are all aware on the authority of the great Dr. Watts, are industrious creatures which employ each shining hour (well-chosen epithet, 'shining') for the good of the community, and to the best purpose. The bee, in fact, is the bon bourgeois of the insect world: he attends strictly to business, loses no time in wild or reckless excursions, and flies by the straightest path from flower to flower of the same species with mathematical precision. ”

“ Their chief merits in contrast with the black Bees are—1, as they naturally inhabit a region of such elevation as 4500 feet, they are less sensitive to cold than the common Bee; 2, their queens are more prolific; 3, they swarm earlier and more frequently; 4, they are much less apt to sting, and not only so, but unless they are intentionally annoyed or irritated they are not inclined to sting; 5, they are more courageous and active in self-defence, and are particularly disposed to plunder the hives of the common kind ”

“ This word comes from the Latin, and means horns or feelers, and the antennæ serve many purposes. In the hive, although all is dark, the bees are able to find their way about by means of them; they build the combs by their aid, and with them they communicate one with another. The antennæ are used, too, for the purpose of smelling, and curious to relate, the ears of the bee are situated in them. We generally expect to find the ears of living creatures in their heads, but in the insect world ears are found in many queer places. ”

“ Amongst birds, that little marauder the blue titmouse (parus major of Linneus) stands the foremost as their enemy, for, says Purchas, "she will eat ten or twelve Bees at a time, and by and by be ready for more; she feeds her young ones also with them. She eats not the whole Bee, but divides it in the middle, pulls out the bagge of honey, litting drop the skinny outside; in the spring she watches for them in the willow and sallow trees, and takes them when they are at their work." ”

“ There was, no doubt, a time of old that tradition could tell about, before all this sweat-shop business was afoot, when a bee might have some individuality and some kind of family life for himself, some sort of pleasure of his own; when he could stretch his sticky legs comfortably of an evening and in a pair of loose pantouffles, unfold his newspaper leisurely, and read under his carefully adjusted spectacles, the latest doings in the bee and blossom world ”

“ From one and the same nest there come out several inhabitants, brothers and sisters, the males with a bright brick-red fleece, and the female of a splendid velvety black, with dark-violet wings. They are all the children of the Bee who built or repaired and furnished the cells. The male Bees lead a careless existence, never work, and do not return to the clay houses except for a brief moment to woo the ladies; they have nothing to do with the housekeeping or the new nests. What they want is the nectar in the flower-cups, not mortar to build with. ”

“ Thus, when a bee alights upon a flower, it pierces the petals and stamens, where the nectar is secreted, and deposits its collection on the tongue, from whence it passes into the gullet (Plate I. Fig. 2 c) at its base. At times, in building combs, the tongue is used as a trowel, with which the minute scales of wax are deposited in their appropriate - 93 - places, and the desired finish is given to the cells. ”

“ Now, here’s something to remember about a bee itself—say a worker bee, because it would be the one that would carry the pollen. First you can remember that in every one of the little tubes on its nose a worker has got five thousand smell hollows, so it is no wonder it can pick you out if you got a scent about you that isn’t right. ”

“ In each of the hinder limbs, one of which is represented in Plate II. Fig. 2, there is an admirable provision made for enabling the Bee to carry to its hive an important part of its stores, and which neither the queen nor the male possess, being exempted from that labour, viz. a small triangular cavity of a spoon-like shape, the exterior of which is smooth and glossy, while its inner surface is lined with strong close-set hairs. This cavity forms a kind of basket, destined to receive the pollen of flowers, one of the ingredients composing the food of the young. ”

“ If I were to repeat all that Aunt Betsey Piper told her nephew about bees, I am afraid that I should fill a book. So I may as well bring this chapter to an end, after saying a few words about other kinds of bees.
I might talk a long time about the humble-bee, or, as some of my little readers call him, the bumble-bee. He is very large, and goes about with an air of importance, like some fat, bustling people that we know of. He has one habit which it is well not to imitate, and that is, of always humming a tune as he roams about. ”

“ The big voice of the Bumble-Bee was heard in every nook and corner of the wood, and from end to end of the deep valley, for Unktomee, the generous, was giving a feast, and the Bee was his herald, the crier of the day.
"Ho, every creeper, every buzzer, all ye little people who fly without feathers, come this day to the festival!" boomed the Bee. "All must prepare to exhibit their best skill; the Toad, who can neither fly nor run, his brother the Bullfrog, with his band of musicians, and even the Flying-squirrel with the rest. ”

“ A bee settling on a passive native probably behaves as it would on a tree or other inanimate substance, which it does not attempt to sting. Still they must often suffer, but they are used to the pain and learn to bear it impassively, as without doing so no man could be a bee-hunter. ”

“ It is, however, says a modern Author, "not the least interesting part of the study of the Bee, that this apparently insignificant insect has hitherto baffled all the research and ingenuity of man to discover the manner of its propagation ”

“ The Leaf-cutter Bee.—There is a species of wild bee, that cover the walls of their cells with coatings of sober-coloured materials, generally selecting for their hangings the leaves of trees, especially of the rose, whence they have been known by the name of the leaf-cutter bees. They differ also from A. Papaveris in excavating longer burrows, and filling them with several thimble-shaped cells, composed of portions of leaves so curiously convoluted, that, if we were ignorant in what school they have been taught to construct them, we should never credit their being the work of an insect. ”

“ All apiarists who have examined carefully the structure of a bee, will at once pronounce it an Articulate. Not only is its body, even from head to sting, composed of joints, but by close inspection we find the legs, the antennæ, and even the mouth-parts, likewise, jointed. ”

“ I heard tell once of a woman bee-keeper years ago, that had a good word about bees. Said she, ‘They never do anything invariably’; and she warn’t far off the truth. She knew her own sex, did wise Mrs Tupper. Now, the trouble with the book-writers on bees is that they try to make a science of something that can never rightly be a science at all. They try to add two numbers together that they don’t know, an’ that are allers changing, and are surprised if they don’t arrive at an exact total. There’s the bees, and there’s the weather: together the result will be so many pounds of honey. ”

“ For better appearance, it may sometimes be necessary to treat alike words which would have different forms when they appear separately; e.g., bumblebee and queen bee, farmhand and ranch hand. In juxtaposition, these and similar words should be made uniform by being printed as two words. ”

“ The domestic Honey-Bee has excited a lively and almost universal interest from the earliest ages. The philosopher and the poet have each delighted in the study of an insect whose nature and habits afford such ample scope for inquiry and contemplation ”

“ The third species is a remarkably small bee, not larger than a common fly, and of a blackish hue. Their honey is not generally much regarded; but the children sometimes amuse themselves by cutting a hole in the trunk of the tree where it is deposited, and carrying it off. ”

“ DOMESTICATED INSECTS Bee, Honey Bee, Honey (Apis mellifica) .—Bees form a family of insects belonging to the same order as the wasps and ants. Many kinds of bees are social, that is to say, they live in communities. As in the case of ants, various sets of members have come to discharge special functions, and the result of this division of labor has been difference of form.
Her Majesty of the Hive—The worker bees attending on the queen, all with their faces turned toward her. The queen is the large bee in the center. ”