t into what is known as
bee-bread.

We seldom see bee-bread these days, as patent hives furnish all the
honey found in city stores and no bee-bread is sold. In remote country
places, however, where the honey is removed _en masse_ from the hive,
there will be plenty of bee-bread to give piquancy to the children's
bread and honey. Moreover, where bees are kept, the bee-keeper can
usually be persuaded to take out a little bee-bread for the children to
see and taste; for it is always present no matter what the kind of hive
used, though it is not always easily obtainable, for where their
household arrangements permit, the bees generally prefer to store it in
the lower chambers away from the honey. Thus the flower supplies large
quantities of food for the bees and for us, and long ago, before America
was discovered and before cane-sugar came into use, the people depended
upon honey for their sweetening.

When the children have found how general is the presence of pollen in
the flowers, where it comes from, and how it is gathered by the bees,
they can learn that the pollen is valuable to the plant itself. It is
indeed one of the most necessary parts of the flower, for without it the
ovules could not develop.

The effect of the pollen upon the seeds can be prettily illustrated by a
simple experiment. Take two or three little pots of geraniums whose buds
are just ready to open. Be sure to have single geraniums, and to stand
them where they will not be disturbed and where the wind will not blow
upon them. Shortly after the flower opens, the anthers will be seen
crowded in its throat and covered with pollen. After a few days the
pollen will have dried up, and the style, tipped with a five-rayed
star-like stigma, will push up above the anthers. Mark pot No. 1 as
untouched. From pot No. 2 carefully take a little pollen on the end of a
small clean paint-brush or tooth-pick and touch with it the five-rayed,
star-like stigma of the flowers in pot No. 3. Be careful not to let any
of it touch the stigmas of the flowers in pot No. 2, the pot from whose
flowers the pollen is taken.

Leave the flower-pots undisturbed and watch results. When the flowers
finally drop their petals, in pots No. 1 and No. 2 there will be no
seed-pods remaining, everything will drop, including the little
flower-stalks and the main stalk supporting the whole cluster of
flowers. In short, no trace of flowers will be left. So far as
seed-forming is concerned, t