The paper examines a complex of figurative meanings of the entomonym “abelha” (“bee”), manifested in the space of the Portuguese poetic text of the 19th–20th centuries. The purpose of the work is to trace the transformation of the image and its semantic increments. We used methods of contextual, stylistic, semantic analysis and linguistic and cultural commentary. The material includes poems by Almeida Garret, Guerra Junqueiro, Antonio Nobre, Fernando Pessoa, Sofi a de Mello, José Saramago, Fernando Echevarría, etc.
