If a populous hive is examined on a warm Summer day, a considerable number of bees will be found standing on the alighting board, with their heads turned towards the entrance, the...
Firefly beetles on sour-dock leaf. Lower surface of firefly beetle enlarged to show the light producing segments of the abdomen. Watch for the first appearance of the fireflies in...
In the inclement season of the year, when the insect has nothing to do and retires to winter quarters, the observer profits by the mildness of the sunny nooks and grubs in the sand...
BUILDING THE WEB. The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies. With lines, pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground, one to the right...
This chapter was to have taken the form of a letter addressed to Charles Darwin, the illustrious naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton in Westminster Abbey. It was my task t...
The Colorado potato beetle showing stages of development and work on a potato plant. Note the small patch of eggs and different sized grub on the plant and the grub, pupa and adult...
In this chapter, I shall enumerate certain very desirable, if not necessary, qualities of a good hive. I have neither the taste nor the time for the invidious work of disparaging o...
If this swinging-process fails entirely when its object is to make the insect lose its bearings, what influence can it have upon the Cat? Is the method of whirling the animal round...
It has already been remarked, that the workers are proved by dissection to be females, all of which, under ordinary circumstances, are barren. Occasionally, some of them appear to...
HERE let us close our hive, where we find that life is reassuming its circular movement, is extending and multiplying, to be again divided as soon as it shall attain the fulness of...
BUILDING THE WEB. The fowling-snare is one of man's ingenious villainies. With lines, pegs and poles, two large, earth-coloured nets are stretched upon the ground, one to the right...
THEIR HABITS. February has its sunny days, heralding spring, to which rude winter will reluctantly yield place. In snug corners, among the rocks, the great spurge of our district,...
February has its sunny days, heralding spring, to which rude winter will reluctantly yield place. In snug corners, among the rocks, the great spurge of our district, the characias...
Few things in the practical department of the Apiary, are more important and yet more shamefully neglected, or grossly mismanaged, than the feeding of bees. In order to make this s...
This is what I wished for, hoc erat in votis: a bit of land, oh, not so very large, but fenced in, to avoid the drawbacks of a public way; an abandoned, barren, sun-scorched bit of...
No idea of any scope can begin its soaring flight but straightway the curmudgeons are after it, eager to break its wings and to stamp the wounded thing under foot. My discovery of...
The ants are closely related to the bees and are similar to them in many respects. They live in colonies consisting of workers, drones, and a queen. The males or drones appear at s...
In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat factories which in the course of the year cut up one million and e...
The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem. I should enjoy working it out in all its details, were I not afraid of wearying the reader's attention. Perhaps I have even gon...
The Ammophila's caterpillar (Cf. "The Hunting Wasps," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 13 and 18 to 20; and Chapter 11 of the present volume....
The drones are, unquestionably, the male bees. Dissection proves that they have the appropriate organs of generation. They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or work...
WE will now consider the manner in which the impregnation of the queen-bee comes to pass. Here again nature has taken extraordinary measures to favour the union of males with femal...
For many years, Apiarians have attempted to make the feeding of bees on a large scale, profitable to their owners. All such attempts however, must, from the very nature of the case...
This substance is gathered by the bees from the flowers, or blossoms, and is used _for the nourishment of their young_. Repeated experiments have proved that no brood can be raised...
In order to study a group of animals which includes so many thousand different kinds it is necessary to divide them into a number of sharply defined divisions or orders. All animal...
While studying an insect it is advisable wherever possible to first study it where it is found in the field and later bring it home and keep it alive in a jar where it can be fed a...
It is generally recognized that the Carabus auratus is an active exterminator of caterpillars; on this account in particular it deserves its title of Gardener Beetle; it is the vig...
Squash stink-bug adult and nymph extracting sap from squash. Plant a few squash hills in the garden in the spring and also plant a few seeds in rich dirt in discarded tin cans or f...
The Spider that showed me the exodus in all its magnificence is known officially as _Thomisus onustus_, WALCK. Though the name suggest nothing to the reader's mind, it has the adva...
Two colonies of bees poorly cared for. Note box hives, crowding, lack of shade, and high weeds. It is a crime to treat bees this way. Go into the fields and study the work of the b...