Moths and Butterflies Help, Too
This work of pollenizing depends for the most part on bees, but many butterflies and moths feed on nectar in the same way. Most moths’ tongues are very long, and many long-necked flowers depend upon them to bring pollen on their soft, furry bodies to the pistils. The moths fly at night, so many long-necked flowers, like the moonflowers, do not open their blooms nor shed their sweet odors in the day time, but wait to show their sweetness until their favorite insect is flying.
Now you see that Beauty Butterfly and night moths are not just a gorgeous bit of living color. Such moths and Beauty Butterfly accomplish much good.
“Well, Miss Gardener said she lay out in the hammock, just as you are lying, Mary Frances, studying just what I have told you, only in a much more difficult way, and she kept saying over and over to herself, ‘Corolla, calyx, sepals, stamens, pistil,’ in order that she might know her lesson, when all at once her book began to slip out of her hand and she could not seem to cling to it at all. She heard the dull thud as it hit the ground.”
“Are you ready?” asked a strange buzzy voice. “I’m always in a hurry, you see. Are you quite ready?”
“I’m ready,” answered Miss Gardener; “ready for anything; but please, where are you, who are you, and what am I to be ready for?”
And again the buzzy voice spoke: “Ready to go with me?”
Miss Gardener looked around toward where the buzzy voice seemed to come from. There, sitting on a rose nearby, was a honey bee.
“Oh,” gasped Miss Gardener, “I’m—that is—I——”
“You’re afraid!” buzzed the bee, coming near her. “You’re afraid I’ll sting you!” She laughed. “We never sting unless we think we need to take care of ourselves or our lovely children.”
“Oh,” apologized Miss Gardener, “I—that is, I—I’m ready, Mrs. Bee.”
“All right, then,” buzzed the bee, flying nearer. “Are you certain you’re not afraid?”
“I’m not,” declared Miss Gardener; but she said a little shiver went down her spine.
“Very well,” buzzed the bee, coming straight at her and hitting her between the eyes.
Miss Gardener tried to scream; before she could do so she had the queerest sensation. Before she could think whether the bee had stung or not, she began to sink down, down, down, down, down, down, until she was just the size of the bee.
“You’ve wondered so long,” said the bee, “about what a beehive was like inside, I am going to take you on a visit to ours. But we must hurry, or I shall not get my duty to the hive people done. Besides, you cannot enter without some pollen or nectar; so here, stop and get a bit.”
“How can I?” began Miss Gardener.
“Fly over to that rose I was on,” said the bee. Miss Gardener flew and gathered some pollen, and, together, Mrs. Honey Bee and she winged their way over to the hive.
[CHAPTER XX]
The Story of the Honey Bee
“NOW,” began her strange little friend, “I shall tell you about the honey bees.
There are two thousand different kinds of bees known at the present time, but the most useful and best understood are the honey bees. The homes (usually wooden boxes) furnished by man for bees are called hives, but the wild bees live ordinarily in hollow trees or caves. The prettiest and gentlest family of the honey bees are the Italian Bees.
Perhaps you think you lead a busy life. If you worked from earliest morning to dark you could not be busier than good Mrs. Honey Bee, for she never trifles nor wastes a minute.
Perhaps you think she goes leisurely from flower to flower, sipping the sweet nectar, and has a very delightful time simply enjoying herself.
You are mistaken, then, for the worker honey bee is not thinking of herself at all, except to eat just enough to keep her well.
She is working for the good of the whole Bee family, and especially for the little Baby Bees.
You begin to see in all your studying, that almost all living things seem to live with the purpose of helping baby things like themselves to live.
So good Mrs. Bee is not gathering honey and pollen bee-flour to “gobble” them up, but is going to pack much of them away for the use of the bees who will live over winter, and for the baby bees, and for the male bees who have no way of gathering food from the flowers for themselves.