"She is fanning her wings so fast that you can't see them," cried Mary. "And here is another bee about two inches in front of Fuzzy doing the same thing; and another," called out Mary, who was greatly excited. And it rather did seem as if these bees had gone crazy, or were having a very strange game, or something. Until I made Mary remember what would happen to us if not just three or four or five or six of us, but many thousand--indeed in Fuzzy's house there are more than ten thousand--were shut up in one house with but a single small opening to let fresh air in and bad air out. For bees breathe just as we do, that is, take fresh air into their bodies and give out poisonous air. And then Mary understood. Fuzzy and the other bees fanning their wings so fast and steadily were ventilating the house! They were making air-currents that would carry the poisonous air, laden with carbonic-acid gas, out of the door, and then fresh air would come in to replace it. And another time Fuzzy kept Mary guessing a little while about what she was doing. We had looked all through the crowds of nurses and wax-makers and comb-builders and house-cleaners without finding Fuzzy. And we decided she was out on a foraging trip, when Mary caught sight of our white-spotted chum loafing about in the little glass-covered runway that leads from the outer opening into the house proper, a sort of little glass-roofed entry we have arranged so that we can see the foragers as they alight and come in, and the various other things that go on by the door. Fuzzy seemed to be loafing, but both Mary and I have seen so much of the feverish activity and the constant work of bees in the hive, and out of it for that matter, that we never expect to find a worker honey-bee really loafing. They literally work themselves to death, dying sometimes at the very door of the hive, with the heavy baskets of pollen on their thighs, the gathering and carrying of which has been the killing of them. Only the bees that over-winter in the hive must have some spare moments on their hands. And here in California even these are few, for a certain amount of foraging goes on practically all the year round.