 Emily Dickinson made a bumblebee the subject of her parody of Isaac Watts 's well @-@ known poem about honeybees , How Doth the Little Busy Bee ( 1715 ) . Where Watts wrote " How skilfully she builds her cell ! How neat she spreads the wax ! " , Dickinson 's poem , " The Bumble @-@ Bee 's Religion " ( 1881 ) begins " His little Hearse @-@ like Figure / Unto itself a Dirge / To a delusive Lilac / The vanity divulge / Of Industry and Morals / And every righteous thing / For the divine Perdition / of Idleness and Spring . " The letter was said to have enclosed a dead bee . 
