The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1886-11-23
The Little Busy Bea

The Little Busy Bea
How many little girls and lads have
felt moped beyond endurance in the
lovely country field, when Sir John
Lubbock and Mr.. Frank Darwin,
Sprengel and the Mullers Of the Con-
tinent, have spent seasons absorbed in
studying the ways of flowers and the
bees. There is passage full of mean.
ing in the Greville Memoirs. where the
blase author, diplomatist, brilliant man
of rank, society and fortune. after ex-
pressing for pages how tired he is Of
the world and every occupation open
to him, writes naively that men who
are observers OF nature never lose their
interest in life, even to old age, but
their book is always fresh, and they
seem turning its early pages which
grow more enchanting as they 60 on.
Whether an English peer or journey
man baker. like Edwards, the Scotch
naturalist, takes to studying nature,
the result is the same, an endless, ev-
er-growing sweetness of pursuit
Early as man of science may be,
Sir John, entering his study few min
utes after 4 in the morning, found a
wasp already at work on the honey set
out of the window. Bees and wasps
suck all of the honey from flowers and
sweets they can carry, fly back to the
hive, store it and come back directly
for another supply No eight hour law
satisfies them. The wasp in question
kept at work without moments rest
until TAG in the evening, making a
day of sixteen hours. The bee began
at 5:45 in the morning and also left of
earlier than the wasp. Each visit from
the honey to the hive took about six
minutes, and he made ten visits an
hour, and hundred in day. The
wasp made sixty visits between Alb IN
the morning and 1906 at noon, for Sir
John timed them all, and gives n table
exact to the minute of eaclr return to
the honey on the sill Sir wasp mast
have strayed to visit flowers sometimes,
or to have flight by the way, for his
time varies from five to ten and twenty
minutes between visits, weieh were
kept up till dusk. This was ia autumn.
In summer they make over time and
work late in the long English twilights.
which are clear till after 8 o clock.
In fine weather bees often visit more
than twenty flowers in a minute, and
so carefully do they economize the sun
ny hours that if they find one ncctary
dry in flower they do not waste time
to examine others on the same plant.
Mr.. Darwin watched certain flowers
carefully, and found that each one was
visited by bees at least thirty times in
day. In large clover fields, or plains
of flowers, every one is visited in the
course of day. Mr.. Darwin carefully
examined a large number of flowers in
such fields, and found that every single
one had been visited by bees There is
something very pretty in the thought of
this tireless, faithful industry Of insects,
and of two of the most learned men in
Great Britain spending whole summer
days in the fields with great faithfulncss
watching the fowery industry.
What use in it, you ask, with true
modern regarded of any pursuit which
does not return its per cent of interest
within the week. Only to find out
more of the uses of flowers and insects
have for each other, that flowers were
made to attract and feed bees that they
in turn might carry the pollen which
fertilizes and secures the seed Of plants.
Without this careful searching work Of
the bees in the clover fields and orch
ards our field and fruit trees would die
out in time. - Vicks Magazine.
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