If ever you want to breach the bees' stately seat, and uncache
hoarded honey from their treasuries, first with a handful of water
spritz and freshen your mouth, and hold out penetrating smoke.
Their rage surpasses measure: hurt, they breathe venom
into their stings, their stingers leave unseen
stuck in the vein, and lay down their lives in the wound.
Twice men gather the lavish yield, two seasons the harvest:
soon as Pleiad Taygete has shown her heavenly face
to earth and with her foot scorns the spurned flood of Ocean,
and when that same star fleeing rainy Pisces
more sadly sinks down from the sky into the wintry waves.
But if you fear a harsh winter, and would spare their future
and pity their crushed spirits and shattered fortunes,-
yet who to fumigate with thyme and prune off disused cells
would hesitate? For often unnoticed the newt has nibbled
the honeycombs, or whole dens of light-fleeing cockroaches,
or the no-account drone bellies up to another's ration,
or the vicious hornet has engaged their unequal arms
or the malevolent race of moths, or the spider spited by Minerva
has hung in the aisles her loose webs.
The more they're plundered, the more doggedly they'll press
to repair the wrack of their fallen race:
they'll cram the galleries and weave their garners about with nectar.
