In my excursions among the glaciers I
occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality, and
push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
mother's bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
warm Shasta breast.
Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here--fine
mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these are
the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
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