Emily Dickinson Lexicon

bee (-s, -'s), n. [OE béo; see bumble bee, n.] (webplay: aid, bag, barbed, bread, brush, convey, earliest, flowers, hairs, honey, individuals, insect, joint, laborers, last, man, need, neighbors, new, overstocked, person, process, queen, settles, sting, supposed, working bee).

1. Entity; creature; part of existence [word play on “be”.]
2. Apis; small buzzing insect; neuter hive worker that gathers honey, collects pollen, and produces wax cells for honey storage; (see Judges 14:8).
3. Paradox; puzzle; contradiction of pleasure and pain.
4. Phrase. “Busy bee”: diligent person; industrious child; [quoted from children's hymn by Isaac Watts “Against Idleness and Mischief”; Anne Brontë quotes the first line in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.]
5. Phrase. “Bumble bee”: heavy-laden winged insect; large buzzing flower-loving species of the apis.