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THE

HONEY BEE.

REPRINTED FROjI THE 'QUARTERLY REVIEW.'
gflP"'-

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1852.

LONDON ; PRINTED BV W, CLOWBS AND SONS, STAMFORD STRBKT.

CONTENTS.

Page
The Honey-bee 1

Its usefulness 1

Kotice in ancient writers.... 3

Bee-music (note) 5

Its habits 6

The di"one 8

The queen-bee 10

Situation of hive 11

Bee-flowers 14

Hymettns 16

Pasturage 18

Transportation of hives .... 20

Egyptian bee-boats 22

Honey-dew 25

Loves of the ants and

aphides (note) 26

Poisonous honey 27

Bee-products 27

Bee-bread 28

Wax 29

Propohs 29

Honey 30

Mead 31

The bee's enemies 33

The swallow 34

Bees and bears 35

Wasps 36

Battles 37

Variety of hives 39

How bees work 41

Golding's bar-hive 42

Kutt's wooden box 43

Payne's cottage-hive 45

Bagster's safety-hive 45

Page

Swarming 47

Instances of their fiiiy 48

Different modes of taking

honey 49

Cotton's method 50

His 'Bee-book' 50

Mission to New Zealand .... 54
First introduction of bees

there 56

Commercial value of wax

and honey 57

Bee-keeping 59

Poor man's stock 60

Stings 62

Profit S3

"Ringing" 66

Swarming 67

Breeding 70

Loyalty of bees 71

Queen-making 75

Francis Huber 76

Burnens 79

Huber's discoveries 81

Dr. Bevan 82

Bee-law 82

Bee-hunting 84

Duration of swarms 86

Death of the drones 89

A bee-wife 90

Bee ''moralities" 91

Gentleman bee-master 95

Hybernating bees (note) .... 96

Its many honours 97

Its Hebrew name 99

148347

THE HONEY-BEE.

How the little busy bee improves each shining hour
—makes hay when the sun shines— makes honey,
that is, when flowers blow — is not only a matter for
the poet and the moralist, and the lover of nature,
but has become an important subject of rural, and
cottage, and even political economy itself If West
Indian crops fail, or Brazilian slave-drivers turn
sulky, we are convinced that the poor at least may
profit as much from then- bee-hives as ever they will
from the extracted juices of parsneps or beet-root.
And in this manufacture they will at least begin the
world on a fair footing. Ko monopoly of capitalists
can drive them from a market so open as this. Their
winged stock have free pasture— comnronage with-
out stint — be the proprietor who he may, wherever
the freckled cowslip springs and the wild thyme
blows. Feudal manors and parked royalties, high
deer-fences and forbidding boundary belts, have no
exclusiveness for them ; no action of trespass can lie
against them, nor are they ever called upon for their
certificates. But if exchange be no robbeiy, they
are no thieves : they only take that which would be
useless to all else besides, and even their hard-earned

D. H. HfLL LIBRARY b
North Carolina State College

THE HONEY-BEE.

store is but a sliort-lived possession. The plagiarist
Man revenges himself on them for the white lilies
they have dusted and disturbed, and makes all their
choicely-culled sweets his own. But though he
never tasted a drop of their honey, the bees would
still accomplish the work that Providence has allotted
them in fructifying our flowers and fruit-blossoms,
which man can at the best but clumsily imitate, and
in originating new varieties which probably far sur-
pass in number and beauty all that has been done by
the gardening experimentalist. Florists are apt to
complain of the mischief the bee does in disturbing
their experiments and crossing species which they
wish to keep separate ; but they forget how many of
their choicest kinds, which are commonly spoken of
as the work of chance, have in reality been bee-
made, and that, where man fructifies one blossom,
the bee has worked upon ten thousand.

It is certain, however, that the great interest
taken in bees from the earliest times, and which,
judging from the number of books lately published,
is reviving among us with no common force, has
arisen chiefly from the marked resemblance which
their modes of life seem to bear to those of man.
Remove every fanciful theory and enthusiastic
reverie, and there still remains an analogy far too
curious to be satisfied with a passing glance. On the
principle of " nihil hmnani a me alienum," this ap-
proximation to hmnan natm^e has ever made bees
favourites with their masters. And theirs is no
hideous mimicry of man's follies and weaknesses,

ITS HISTORY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 3

such as we see in tlie monkey tribe, which is too
much of a tiTie satii'e to afford unalloyed amusement :
their life is rather a serious matter-of-fact business, a
likeness to the best and most rational of our manners
and government, set about with motives so appa-
rently identical with our o^svii, that man's pride
has only been able to escape from the ignominy of
allowing such humble creatm-es a portion of his mo-
nopolized Reason, by assigning them a separate
quality under the name of Instinct. The philoso-
phers of old were not so jealous of man's distinctive
quality ; and considering how little at the best we
know of what reason is, and how vain have been the
attempts to distmguish it from instmct, there may
be, after all, notwithstanding the complacent smile
of modem sciohsts, as much truth, as certainly there
is poetry and charity m Yirgil, who could refer the
complicated and wonderful economy of bees to no-
thing less than the dii'ect inspiration of the Divine
Mind.

Bees indeed seem to have claimed generally a
greater interest from the ancients than they have
acquired in modern times. De Montford, who drew
" the portrait of the honey-fly," in 1646, enmne-
rates the authors on the same subject, up to his
time, as between five and six himdred ! There -are,
to be sure, some apocryphal names in the list —
Aristaeus, for instance — whose works were wholly
unknown (as he himself assm^es us) to Mr. Huish ; a
fact which will not surprise 6ur readers when we
introduce hun as the son of Apollo, and the father of

b2

THE HONEY-BEE.

Actseon, the " peeping Tom " of my tliological scan-
dal. Aristseus himself was patron of bees and arch-
bee-master ; but no ridicule tlirown on such a jumble
of names as that given by De Montford must make
us forget the real services achieved in this, as in
every other branch of knowledge, by one among the
number, the Encyclopsediast Aristotle — the pupil of
hun who is distmguished as the " Attic Bee ;" or the
life of Aristomachus, devoted to this pursuit ; or the
enthusiasm of Hyginus, who, more than 1800 years
before Mr. Cotton, collected all the bee-passages
which could be found scattered over the pages of an
earlier antiquity.

Varro, Colmnella, Celsus, and Pliny have each
given in their contributions to the subject, and some
notion may be formed of the minuteness with wliich
they entered upon their researches from a passage in
Colmnella, who, speaking of the origin of bees, says,
that Euhemerus maintained that they were first pro-
duced in the island of Cos, Euthronius in Mount
Hymettus, and Nicander in Crete. And, consider-
ing the obscurity of the subject and the discordant
theories of modern tunes, there is perhaps no branch
of natural history in which the ancients arrived at
so much truth. If since the invention of printing
authors can gravely relate stories of an old woman
who, having placed a portion of the consecrated
elements at the entrance of a bee-hive, presently saw
the inmates busy in creating a shrine and altar of

* " Hyginus vetprum auctorum placita secretis dispersa monu-
mentis indu^itrife coilegit." — Col. ix., ii. 1.

BEE-MUSIC.

wax, witli steeple and bells to boot, and lieard, if we
remember riglitly, something like the commence-
ment of an anthem* — we really think that they
should be charitably inclined to the older bee-
authors, who believed that they gathered their
young from flowers, and ballasted themselves with
pebbles against the high winds, t

We shall have occasion to show as we proceed
how correct in the main the classical writers are on
the subject of bees, compared with other parts of
natural liistory ; but the book of all books to which
the scholar will turn ao^ain and acrain with increased
delight, is the fourth Georgic. Tliis, the most
beautiful portion of the most finished poem of Eoman
antiquity, is wholly devoted to our present subject ;

* There was lately published in a weekly newspaper the notes of
a trio, in which the old Queen and two Princesses (of the hive) are
the perforraei-s, the young ladies earnestly begging to be allowed to
take an airing, while the old duenna a? determinedly refuses. This
apiarian " Pray, goody, please to moderate " grows louder and thicker,
" faster and faster," till at last the young folks, as might be expected,
carry the day ; " and what I can nearest liken it to," says the writer,
*' is a man in a rather high note endeavouring to repeat, in quaver or
crotchet time, the letter M, with his lips constantly closed." This
is a tolerably easy music-lesson ; let our readers try. The fact, how-
ever, is that all this music is originally derived from a curious old
book — "The Feminine Monarchy, or the History of Bees," by Charles
Butler, of Magdalen (Oxford, 163-1) : at p. 78 of which work this
** Bees' Madrigal " may be found, with notes and words. Old Butler
has been sadly rifled, without much thanks, by all succeedmg bee-
writers. He has written upon that exhaustive system adopted by
learned writers of th.it time, so that nothing that was then known on
the subject is omitted. Butler introduced eight new letters — aspirates
— into the English language, besides other eccentricities of ortho-
graphy ; so that, altogether, his volume has a most outlandish look.

t The latter mistake arose probably from the mason-bee, which
carries sand wherewith to construct its nest. For an account of the
145 varieties of English bees consult Kirby's *' Monographia Apiim
AnglicE.^'

6 THE HONEY-BEE.

and sucK is tlie deliglitful manner in wliicli it is
treated, and so exquisite the little episodes intro-
duced— tlie Corycian veteran's cottage-garden, the
wanderings of Aristaeus, the fate of Eurydice — that
it would amply repay (and this is saying a good
deal) the most forgetful country gentleman to nib up
his schoolboy Latin, for the sole pleasure he would
derive from the perusal. We need hardly say that
no bee-fancier will content himself with anything
less than the original : he will there find the beau-
ties of the poet far out-balancing the errors of the
natm'alist ; and as even these may be useful to the
learner — for there is no readier way of imparting
truth than by the correction of error — we shall fol-
low the subject in some degi'ee under the heads
which Virgil has adopted, first introducing our little
friends in the more correct character which modern
science has marked out for them.

The " masses " of every hive consist of two kinds
of bees, the workers and the drones. The first are
undeveloped females, the second are the males.
Over these presides the mother of the hive, the
queen-bee. The number of workers in a strong hive
is above 15,000, and of drones about one to ten of
these. This proportion, though seldom exact, is
never very much exceeded or fallen short of A
single family, where swarming is prcA^ented, will
sometimes amoimt, according to Dr. Bevan, to
50,000 or 60,000, In their wild state, if we may
credit the quantity of honey said to be found, they
must sometimes greatly exceed this number.

ITS HABITS.

" Sweet is the hum of bees," says Lord Bjron;
and those who have Kstened to this music in its full
luxury, stretched upon some sunny bed of heather,
where the perfxune of the crushed thyme struggled
with the faint smell of the bracken, can scarcely
have failed to watch the little busy musician,

" with honey'd thigh,
That at her flowery worii doth sing,"

too well to require a lengthened description of her ;
how she flits from flower to flower with capricious
fancy, not exhausting the sweets of any one spot,
but, on the prmciple of " live and let live," taking
something for herself, and yet leaving as much or
more for the next comer, passing by the just-opening
and the faded flowers, and deicfnino: to notice not

' Co

even one out of five that are ftill-blown, combining
the pliilosophy of the Epiciu'ean and the Eclectic ; —
or still more like some fastidious noble, on the grand
tour, with all the world before him, hurrying on in
restless haste from place to place, skimming over the
surface or tasting the sweets of society, carrying off
some memento from every spot he has lit upon, and
yet leaving plenty to be gleaned by the next tra-
veller, dawdlmg in one place he knows not why,
whisking by another which woidd have amply repaid
his stay, and still pressing onwards as if in search of
sometliincr he knows not what — thouofh he too often
fails to carry home the same proportion of happiness
as his compeer dors of honey.

" A bee among the flowers in spring," says Paley,
''is one of the cheerfulest objects that can be looked

8 THE HONEY-BEE.

upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment : so busy
and so pleased.*^

The Drone may be known by the noise he makes.
Hence his name. He has been the butt of all who
have ever written about bees, and is indeed a bye-
word all the world over. No one can fail to hit off
his character. He is the " lazy yawning drone " of
Shakspeare. The

" Immunisque sedens aliena ad pabula fucus "*

of Virgil. "The drone," says Butler, "is a gross,
stingless bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and
idleness. For howsoever he brave it with his round
velvet cap, his side gown, his full paunch, and his
loud voice, yet is he but an idle companion, living
by the sweat of others' brows. He worketh not at
all either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as
much as two labourers : you shall never find his maw
without a good drop of the purest nectar. In the
heat of the day he ilieth abroad, aloft, and about,
and that with no small noise, as though he would do
some great act ; but it is only for his pleasure, and to
get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to
his cheer." This is no bad portrait of the burly hus-
band of the hive. He is a proper Sir John Falstaff,
a gross fat animal, cowardly, and given to deep pota-
tions. He cannot fail to be recognised by his broad

* Virgil, who has confounded their battles with their swarming,
seems also to have made a Drone-king. What else can this mean —

" nie hoiTidus alter
Desidi&j latumque trahens inglorius ahnma " ?

THE DRONE.

body and blunt tail and bead, and tbe " bagpipe i' tlie
nose." He is never seen settling on flowers, except
at tlie beginning of August, when be may sometimes
be met upon a late-blown rose, or some double flower
that the workers rarely frequent, in a melancholy,
musing state, as if prescient of the miserable fate
that so soon awaits him. The occasion for so large a
proportion of

" These lazy fathers of the industrious hive "

is yet an misolved riddle. One author fancied them
the water-carriers of the commonwealth. Some have
supposed that the drones sit, like hens, upon the
Qffcrs :* in which case the hair on their tails would
seem to serve the same purpose as the feather-breeches
which Catherine of Eussia had made for her ministers
when she caused them as a punishment to hatch eggs
in a large nest in the antechamber. But this sitting
is mere fancy, the earwig being the only insect, ac-
cording to Kirby and Spence, that broods over its
eggs. Dr. Bevan denies that they are useflil, or at
least necessary, in keeping up the heat of the hive
in breeding-time, which is the commonly received
reason for their great nimabers. Huber thought so
large a quantity were required, that when the queen
takes her hymeneal flight she may be sure to meet
with some in the upper regions of the air. Her
embrace is said to be fatal.

* " By this time your bees sit." — Evelyn's Calendar for March.
" When it has deposited the eggs, it sits upon them, and cherishes
them in the same manner as a hi id. "—Arabic Dictionary quoted by
Cotton. " Progeniem nidosque fovent." — Georg. iv. 56.

10 THE HONEY-BEE.

Last in our description, but

" First of the throng, and foremost of the whole,
One stands confest the sovereign and the soul."

This is the Queen-bee. Her power was acknow-
ledged before her sex was known, for Greeks, Latins,
and Arabs always style her " the king;"* and it may
be thought an argument in favour of monarcliical
government, that the '^ tyrant-quelling " Athenians,
and republican Eomans who almost banished the
name with the blood of their kings, were forced to
admit it to describe ' ' the first magistrate " of this
natural commonwealth. '' The queen," says our old
author, " is a fair and stately bee, differing from the
vulgar both in shape and colour." And it is amus-
ing that the most sober writers cannot speak of her
without assigning her some of those stately attributes
which we always connect with hmnan sovereignty.
Bevan remarks that " she is distinguishable from the
rest of the society by a more measured movement ;"
her body is more taper than that of the working-bee ;
her wings shorter, for she has little occasion for flight ;
her legs — what would Queen Elizabeth, who would
not hear even of royal stockings, think of our pro-
faneness? — her legs unfurnished with grooves, for
she gathers no pollen ; her proboscis short, for the
honey comes to her, not she to the honey ; her sting
short and curved — for sting she has, though she
seldom uses it.

In addition to these, Huber and others have

* So also Shakspeare: "They have a king," kc— Henry F.,
Act I., s. 2.

THE QUEEN-BEE. 11

thought that they discerned certain black bees in
many hives, but it is now generally allowed that
these, if they exist at all, are not a different species,
but superannuated workers.

Having ** caught our hare," got our stock of bees,
the next question is, where shall we place them?
and there is little to be added to Vira-il's suo-orestions

o DO

on this head.* The bee-house should face the south,
with a turn perhaps to the east ; be protected from
the north and prevailing winds ; not too far from the
dwelling, lest they become shy of man, nor too near,
lest they be interrupted by him. No paths should
cross its entrance, no high trees or bushes intercept
their homeward flight. Yet, if placed in the centre
of a treeless lawn, they would be apt in swarming to
fly away altogether, so that Virgil rightly recom-
mends the palm or some evergreen tree to overhang
the hive. Another of his injunctions, which no
modern writer seems to notice, is to sprinkle some
neighbouring branch, where you wish them to hang,
with honey and sweet herbs bruised. Those who
have been so often troubled by the inconvenient
places on which swarms have settled might do well
to try the recommendation of the old Mantuan bee-
master. A quiet nook in low ground is better than

* Old Tusser, whose saws deserve to be I'epublished ia a cheap
form by the Royal Agricultural Society, runs thus : —

" Set hive on a plank not too low on the ground,
Where herb with the flowers may compass it round ;
And boards to defend it from north and north-east,
From showers and rubbish, from vermin and beast."

Tiisser's Fie e Huwlr eel Points of Good Husbandry , 1560.

12 THE HONEY-BEE.

an elevated situation : tliey have then their uphill
flight when their bodies are unburdened, and an
inclined plane to skim down when they come home
loaded with their hard-earned treasure. Rogers, at
whose

" cot beside the hill
A bee-hive's hum should soothe the ear,''

has supposed the bee to be guided back to its hive
by the recollection of the sweets it passed in its
outward flight — a beautiful instance of "the
pleasures of Memory."

" O'er thymy downs she bends her busy course,
And many a stream allures her to its source :
'Tis noon ; 'tis night. That eye so finely wrought,
Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought, ,
Now vainly asks the scenes she left behind ;
Its orb so full, its vision so confined !
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell ?
Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell ?
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clue
Of varied scents that charm' d her as she flew?
Hail, Memory, hail ! thy universal reign
Guards the least link of Being's glorious chain."

Whether this be the true solution or not, her return
to her hive, so straight as it is, is very curious.
We are convinced of the use of bee-houses as a pro-
tection for the hives, though they are disapproved of
by many modern writers. They serve to moderate
the temperature in winter and summer, and screen
the neighbourhood of the hive in rough weather.
Dr. Bevan says —

" Excepting in peculiarly sheltered nooks, an apiary would
not be well situated near a great river, nor in the neighbour-
hood of the sea, as in windy weather the bees would be in

SITUATION OF HIVE. 13

danger of di'owning from being blown into the water. . . .
Yet it should not be far from a rivulet or spring ; such
streams as glide gently over pebbles are the most desirable,
as these afford a variety of resting-places for the bees to
alight upon."

Tills is almost a translation of Virgil's " In
medium, sen stabit iners," &c. Water is most
important to them, particularly in the early part of
the season. Let shallow troughs, therefore, never
be neglected to be set near the liives, if no natural
stream is at hand.

It seems that bees, like men, require a certain
quantity of saline matter for their health. In the
Isle of Wight the people have a notion that every
bee goes down to sea to drink twice a-day ; and they
are certainly seen to drink at the farm-yard pool —

" the gilded puddle
That beasts would cough at " —

when clearer water is near. Following the ex-
ample of our modern graziers, a small lump of
rock-salt might be a useful medicine-chest for our
winged stock. Foul smells and loud noises have
always been thought annoying to bees, and hence it
is deemed advisable never to place the hives in the
neighbourhood of forges, pigsties, and the hke.
Virgil even fancied that they disliked the neighboiu*-
hood of an echo : but upon this Gilbert White, of
Selbome, remarks : —

" This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted
by the philosophers of these days, especially as they all
now seem agreed that insects are not furnished with any

14 THE HONEY-BEE.

organs of hearing at all. But if it should be urged that,
though they cannot hear, yet perhaps they may feel the
repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. Yet
that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful I deny, be-
cause bees, in good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where
the echoes are very strong ; for this village is another Ana-
thoth, a place of responses .or echoes. Besides, it does not
appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of
being affected by sounds ; for I have often tried my own
with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and
with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship
at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their
various employments undisturbed, and without showing the
least sensibility or resentment." *

Next to tlie situation of tlie liive is the considera-
tion of tKe bees' pasturage. When there is plenty
of the white Dutch clover, sometimes called honey-
suckle, it is sure to be a good honey year. The red
clover is too deep for the proboscis of the common
bee, and is therefore not so useful to them as is gene-
rally thought. Many lists have been made of bee-
flowers, and of such as should be planted round the
apiary. Mignionette, and borage, and rosemary, and
bugloss, and lavender, the crocus for the early spring,
and the ivy flowers for the late autumn, might help
to furnish a very pretty bee-garden ; and the lime

* Of Gilbert White — who by the way was not "parson of the
parish," but continued a Fellow of Oriel till his death — all that could
be heard at the scene of his researches by a late diligent inquirer was,
that " he was a still, quiet body, and that there was not a bit of
harm in him." And such is the fame of a man the power of whose
writings has immortalized an obscure village and a tortoise — for who
has not heard of " Timothy "?— as long as the English language
lives !

BEE-FLOWERS. 15

and liquid-amber, the liorse-cliestnut, and the sallow
would be the best trees to plant around. Dr. Bevan
makes a very good suggestion, that lemon-thyme
should be used as an edging for garden-walks and
flower-beds, instead of box, thrift, or daisies. That
any material good, however, can be done to a large
colony by the few plants that, under the most
favourable circumstances, can be sown around a bee-
house is of course out of the question. The bee is
too much of a roamer to take pleasure in trim
gardens. It is the wild tracts of heath and furze,
the broad acres of bean-fields and buck-wheat, the
lime avenues, the hedge-row flowers, and the clover
meadows, that furnish his haunts and fill his cell.
StiU it may be useful for the yoimg and weak bees
to have food as near as possible to their home, and
to those who wish to watch their habits a plot of
bee-flowers is indispensable ; and we know not the
bee that could refuse the following beautiful invita-
tion of Professor Smythe : —

" Thou cheerful Bee ! come, freely come,
And travel round my woodbine bower !

Delight me with thy wandering hum,
And rouse me from my musing hour :

Oh ! try no more those tedious fields,

Come, taste the sweets my garden yields :

The treasures of each blooming mine,

The bud, the blossom, — all are thine.

And, careless of this noon-tide heat,

I'll follow as thy ramble guides ;
To watch thee pause and chafe thy feet,

And sweep them o'er thy downy sides :
Then in a flower's bell nestling lie,
And all thy envied ardour ply !
Then o'er the stem, though fair it grow,
With touch rejecting, glance, and go.

^

16 THE HONEY-BEE.

0 Nature kind ! 0 labourer wise !

That roam'st along the summer's ray,
Glean'st every bliss thy life supplies,

And meet'st prepared thy wintry day !
Go, envied, go — with crowded gates
The hive thy rich return awaits ;
Bear home thy store, in triumph gay,
And shame each idler of the day."

Pliny bids us plant tliyine and apiastcr, violets,
roses, and lilies. Columella, wlio, contrary to all
other authority, says that limes are hurtful, advises
cytisus, rosemary, and the evergi'een pine. That
the prevalent flower of a district will flavour the
honey is certain. The delicious honey of the Isle of
Bourbon will taste for years of the orange-blossoms,
from which, we believe, it is gathered, and on open-
ing a bottle of it the room will be filled with the
perfume. The same is the case with the honey of
Malta. Corsican honey is said to be flavoured by
the box-tree, and we have heard of honey being
rendered useless which was gathered in the neigh-
bomhood of onion fields. No one who has kept
bees in the neighbourhood of a wild common can
fail to have remarked its superior flavour and bouquet.
The wild rosemary that abounds in the neighbour-
hood of Narbonne gives the high flavour for which
the honey of that district is so renowned. But the
plant the most celebrated for this quality is the
classic and far-famed thyme of Mount Hymettus,
the Satureia capitata of botanists. This, we are
assured by Pliny, was transplanted fi:om the neigh-
bourhood of Athens into the gardens of the Roman
bee-keepers, but they failed to unport with it tlie

HYMETTUS. 17

flavour of tlie Hymettic lioney ; for the exiled plant,
which, according to tliis author, never flourished but
in the neighbourhood of the ocean, languished for
the ban'en rocks of Attica and the native breezes of
its " own blue sea." And the honey of the Hy-
mettus has not departed with the other glories of
old Greece, though its flavour and aroma are said to
be surpassed by that of neighbouring localities once
famous from other causes. While the silver-mines
of Laurium are closed, and no workman's steel rinsfs
in the marble-quarries of the Pentelicus, the hmn of
five thousand bee-hives is still heard amonsf the
thyme, the cistus, and the lavender which yet clothe
these liills. " The Cecropian bees," says C. Words-
worth, " have survived all the revolutions which
have changed the features and uprooted the popula-
tion of Attica :" though the defile of Thermopylae
has become a swampy plain, and the bed of the
Cephisus is laid dry, this one feature of the coimtry
has remained unaltered : —

" And still his honey'd store Hymettus yields,
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds.
The free-born wandei-er of thy mountain-air."

The honey here collected used to be reserved for the
especial eating of the archbishop of the district, and
few travellers could even get a taste of it. Such
was the case a few years ago : we presume the pur-
chase of the Hymettus by a countryman of ours,
Mr. Bracebridge, who has also built him a villa
there, must have tended to abolish the episcopal
monopoly.

18 THE HONEY-BEE.

It lias been often .discussed whether a country can
be overstocked with bees ; we believe tliis is quite
as certain as that it may be over-peopled and over-
manufactured. But that this is not yet the case
with resfard to Britain, as far at least as bees are
concerned, we feel equally sure. Of course it is
impossible to ascertain what number of acres is suffi-
cient for the support of a single hive, so much
depending on the season and the nature of the
herbage ; but, nevertheless, in Bavaria only a certain
number of hives is allowed to be kept, and these
must be brought to an establishment mider the
charge of a skilful apiarian, each station being four
miles apart, and containing 150 hives. This is cen-
tralization and red-tapery with a vengeance ! A
slory is told that in a village in Germany where the
number of hives kept was regulated by law, a bad
season had nevertheless proved that the place was
overstocked from the great weakness of all the stalls
in the neighbourhood. There was but one exception.
This was the hive of an old man, who was generally
set down as being no wiser than his neighbours, and
this perhaps all the more because he was very ob-
servant of the habits of his little friends, as well as
careful in harvesting as much honey as he could.
But how came his hive to prosper when all the rest
were falling off? His cottage was no nearer the
pasture ; and his garden, though he grew a few bee-
flowers, was not larger than the rest. He certainly
must have bewitched his neighbours' hives, or made
" no canny" bargain for his own. Many were the

BAVARIAN GAFFER. 19

whisperings and great the suspicions that no good
woidd come of the gaffer's honey thus mysteriously
obtained. The old man bore all these surmises
patiently ; the honey-harvest came roimd, and when
he had stored away just double wliat any of the rest
had saved, he called his friends and neighbours
together, took them into his garden and said — " If
you had been more charitable in your opinions, I
would have told you my secret before —

This is the only witchcraft I have used :" —

and he pointed to the inclination of his hives — one
degree more to the east than was generally adopted.
The conjiu-ation was soon cleared up ; the sim came
upon his liives an hour or two sooner by this move-
ment, and his bees were up and stirring, and had
secured a large share of the morning's honey, before
liis neighbours' bees had roused themselves for the
day. Mr. Cotton, who gives the outline of the
story which w^e have ventured to fill up, quotes the
proverb that " early birds pick up most worms,"
and draws the practical moral, in which we heartily
concur, that your bedroom-window should always,
if possible, face the east.

In an arable country, with little waste land and
good farming, very few stocks can be supported;
and this has led some enthusiastic bee-masters to
regret the advancement of agriculture, and the con-
sequent decrease of wild flowers — or weeds, accord-
ing to the eye that views them — and the enclosure'

c2

20 THE HONEY-BEE.

of wastes and commons.* Even a very short dis-
tance will make a great difference in tlie amount of
honey collected. We know of an instance where a
bee-keeper at Carshalton in Smrey, suspecting, from
the fi«"htino[ of his bees and other sifms, that there
was not pasturage enough in the innnediate neigh-
bourhood, conveyed away one of liis lightest and
most worthless hives, and liid it in the Woodman-
steme furzes, a distance of about a mile and a half.
Fortunately it lay there imdiscovered, and on re-

* We can hardly ask, much less expect, that hedge-side swards
sliould be made broader, and corn-fields be left unweeded, and the
ploughshare be stayed, for the sake of the bee ; but we do boldly
enter our protest against the enclosure and planting of her best pas-
turage— our wild heath-grounds. And not for her sake only, but
lest the taste, health, or pleasure of the proprietor himself should
suffer any detriment. Jlore streimous advocates for planting than
ourselves exist not. The dictum of the great Master of the North,
" Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock, it will be growing while ye are
sleeping " — put forth m the *' Heart of Mid Lothian," and repeated
by him in our Journal, — has been the parent of many a fair planta-
tion, and may it produce many more ! But there are rush-bearing
commons, and ragged banks of gravel, and untractable clay-lands,
and hassocky nooks, enough and to spare, the fit subjects for new
plantations, without encroaching upon our " thymy downs " and
heather hills. The land of the mountain and the flood may indeed
afford from her very riches in this respect to spare some of her cha-
racteristic acres of "bonny blooming heather;" and there are parts of
the northern and midland counties of England that can equally en-
dure the sacrifice ; — but spare — oh, spare — to spread the damp sickly
atmosphere of a crowded plantation over the few free, bracing, breezy
heath-grounds which the south can boast of. — Such a little range of
hills we know in Surrey, lying between Addington and Coombe, now
sadly encroached upon by belts and palings since our boyhood days.
Only let a man once know what a summer's evening stroll over such
a hill, as it " sleeps in moonlight luxury," is — let him but once have
tasted the dry, fresh, and balmy air of such a pebbly bank of heath,
without a tree, save perhaps a few pines, within a mile around, when
all the valley and the woodland below are wet with dew and dank
with foliage, — and then say whether such an expanse can be well ex
clianged for any conceivable advantage of thicket or grove.

TRAXSPORTATIOX OF HIVES. 21

mo^'ing it home lie foimd tliat it had become one of
his heaviest hives. We mention this as a case
comino; under our own knowledcre, because a late
writer, who has shown rather a waspish disposition
in his attacks on Mr. Cotton's system, seems to
question not only the advantage, but the practica-
bility of the transportation of hives altogether. But
the fact is, that in the north of England and in
Scotland, where there are large tracts of heather-
land apart from any habitation, nothing is more
common than for the bee-masters of the towns and
villages to submit their hives during the honey
season to the care of the shepherd of the district.
" About six miles from Edinburgh," says Dr. Bevan,
" at the foot of one of the Pentland Hills, stands
Logan House, supposed to be the residence of the
Sir William Worthy celebrated by Allan Eamsay in
his ' Gentle Shepherd.' The house is at present
occupied by a shepherd, who about the beginning
of August receives about a himdred bee-hives from
his neighbours resident beyond the hills, that the
bees may gather honey from the luxuriant blossoms
of the mountain heather." Mr. Cotton saw a man
in Germany who had 200 stocks, which he managed
to keep all rich by changing their places as soon as
the honey -season varied. " Sometunes he sends
them to the moors, sometimes to the meadows, some-
times to the forest, and sometimes to the hills."
He also speaks of it being no imcommon sight in
Switzerland to see a man jom^neying with a bee-hive
at liis back.

22 THE HONEY-BEE.

There is something very interesting and Arcadian
in this leading of the bees out to pasture, and it
deserves more attention than it has yet met with in
this country. The transportation we have hitherto
spoken of is only to a short distance and on a small
scale ; but in Germany travelling caravans of these
little wild-beasts may be met with, which sometimes
make a journey of thirty miles, taking four days to
perform it. There is nothing new in this transmi-
gration, for Columella tells us that the inhabitants
of Achaia sent their hives into Attica to benefit by
the later-blowing flowers. The most pleasing picture,
however, of all is that of the floating bee-houses of
the Nile, mentioned by old and modern writers, and
thus described by Dr. Bevan : —

" In Lower Egypt, where the flower-harvest is not so
early hy several weeks as in the upper districts of that coun-
try, this practice of transportation is carried on to a con-
siderable extent. About the end of October the hives, after
being collected together from the different villages, and con-
veyed up the Nile, marked and numbered by the individuals
to whom they belong, are heaped pyramidally upon the
boats prepared to receive them, which, floating gradually
down the river, and stopping at certain stages of their pas-
sage, remain there a longer or a shorter time, according to
the produce which is afforded by the surrounding country.
After travelling three months in this manner, the bees,
having culled the perfumes of the orange-flowers of the
Said, the essence of roses of the Faiocum, the treasures of the
Arabian jessamine, and a variety of flowers, are brought
back about the beginning of February to the places from
which they have been carried. The productiveness of
the flowers at each respective stage is ascertained by

EGYPTIAN BEE-BOATS. 23

the gi-adual descent of the boats in the water, and which is
probably noted by a scale of measurement. This industry
procures for the Egyptians delicious honey and abundance
of bees'-wax. The proprietors, in return, pay the boatmen
a recompense proportioned to the number of hives which
have thus been carried about from one extremity of Egypt
to the other.''— p. 233.

Such a convoy of 4000 Mves was seen by Niebuhr
on tbe Nile between Cairo and Damietta. An
equally pleasing account is given by ]\Ii'. Cotton of
tbe practice in France : —

" In France they put their hives in a boat, some hundreds
together, which floats down the stream by night, and stops
by day. The bees go out in the morning, return in the
evening ; and when they are all back and quiet, on the boat
floats. I have heard they come home to the ringing of a
bell, but I believe they would come home just the same,
whether the bell rings or no." — Cotton, p. 89.

" I should like," he continues, " to see this tried
on the Thames, for no river has more bee-food in
spring; meadows, clover, beans, and lime-trees in
different places and times, for summer."

Happy bees, whose masters are good enough to
give them so delightful a treat ! We can fancy no
more pleasing sight, except it be the omnibuses full
of school-cliildren that one sometimes sees on a fine
summer's day making for the hills of Hampstead or
Norwood.

Connected with their transmigration is the ques-
tion of the extent of their flight. We believe that
two miles may be considered as the radius of the

24 THE HONEY-BEE.

circle of tlicir ordinary range, though circimistances
will occasionally drive them at least a mile more.
We have read somewhere of a man who kept bees at
the top of his house in Holborn, and wishing to find
out where they pastured, he sprinkled them all with
a red powder as they came out of the hive in the
morning. Away he hied to Hampstead, thinking it
the best bee-pasture at hand, and what was his de-
light at beholding among the multitudes of busy bees
that he found there some of his own little fellows
which he had " incarnadined " in the morning ! The
apiary of Bonner, a great bee-observer, was situated
in a garret in the centre of Glasgow; and that of
Mr. Payne, the author of the " Bee-Keeper's Guide "
— a very useful and practical book, because short and
simple — is in the middle of a large town.

Judging from the sweep that bees take by the side
of a railroad train in motion, we should set down
their pace about thirty miles an hoiu\ This would
give them four minutes to reach the extremity of
their common range. A bee makes several journeys
from and to the hive in a day ; and Huish remarked
that a honey -gathering bee was absent about thirty-
five minutes, and a pollen-collector about half that
time. The pollen or farina of flowers is doubtless
much more plentiful and accessible than the honey.
The same writer observed bees on the Isle of May,
at the entrance of the Frith of Forth, though there
was no hive kept on the island, which is distant four
miles from the mainland. This is an amazing stretch
of flight, considering the element over which they

HOXEY-DEW. 25

have to fly, the risk of finding food when they land^
and the load they have to retimi with, if successful.
Were they not wild bees of the island ?

In speaking of the food of bees, we must not omit
the Honey-dew. This shining, gummy substance
must have been often noticed in hot weather on the
leaves of the lime and oak by the most incurious
observer. The ancients considered it either as a
deposition of the atmosphere or an exudation from
the leaves of trees ; for to these opinions the " aerii
mellis coelestia dona," and " quercus sudabunt roscida
mella," of Vu'gil seem to refer. Gilbert White
held the singidar notion that it was the effluvia of
flowers evaporated and drawn into the atmosphere
by the heat of the weather, and then falling down
again in the night with the dews that entangle them.
Its origin is certainly one of those vexed questions,
which, like that of " fairy rings," yet require further
light for a satisfactory explanation. At present it is
impossible to reconcile the discrepancy in the obser-
vations of naturalists, some actually asserting that
they have seen showers of it falling. To adjust the
most common opinions, it is now generally admitted
that there are two somxes, if not two kinds; one
being a secretion from the leaves of certain plants,
the other a secretion from the body of an insect.
Those little green insects, the aphides, which we
commonly caU blight, are almost always observed to
accompany any large deposition of Iloney-dew, and
are said to have the power of jerking it to a great
distance. The subject at the present moment is

26 THE HONEY-BEE.

attracting great attention among our naturalists, and
it is probable that the clash of opinions will bring
out something very near the truth. That the apliides
do secrete a saccharine fluid has been long known,
and the bees are not their only fellow-insects who are
fond of it. Then' presence produces a land of milk
and honey to the ants, who follow them w^herever
they appear, and actually herd them like cows and
milk them ! *

* What follows is from the delightful ' Introduction to Entomo-
logy,' by Kirby and Spence. " The loves of the ants and the aphides
have been long celebrated ; and that there is a connection between
them you may at any time, in the proper season, convince yourself;
for you will always find the former very busy on those trees and
plants on which the latter abound ; and, if you examine more closely,
you will discover that their object in thus attending upon them is to
obtain the saccharine fluid — which may well be denominated their
milk — that they secrete. . . . This, however, is the least of their
talents, for they absolutely possess the art of making them yield it at
their pleasure — or, in other words, of milking them. On this occa-
sion their antennae are their fingers ; with these they pat the abdomen
of the aphis on each side alternately, moving them very briskly: a
little drop of fluid immediately appears, which the ant takes in its
mouth. When it has milked one, it proceeds to another, and so on,
till, being satiated, it returns to the nest. But you are not arrived at
the most singular part of this histoiy — that the ants make a pro'perty
of these cows, for the possession of which they contend with great
earnestness, and use every means to keep them to themselves. Some-
times they seem to claim a right to the aphides that inhabit the
branches of a tree or the stalks of a plant ; and if stranger-ants
attempt to share their treasure with them, they endeavour to drive
them away, and may be seen running about in a great bustle, and
exhibiting every symptom of inquietude and anger. Sometimes, to
rescue them from their rivals, they take their aphides in their mouth :
they generally keep gniard round them, and when the branch is con-
veniently situated they have recourse to an expedient still more effec-
tual to keep off interlopei's — they enclose it in a tube of earth or other
materials, and thus confine them in a kind of paddock near their nest,
and often communicating with it." How much of this is fanciful we
must leave our readers to detennine by their own observations ; but
let no man think he knows how to enjoy the country who has not
studied the volumes of Kirby and Spence.

POISONOUS HONEY.

Much has been wTitten upon the poisonous effects
of certain plants, sometimes upon the honey, some-
times upon the bees themselves. Every schoolboy
must remember the account given by Xenophon of
the effect produced upon the Ten Thousand by the
honey in the neighbourhood of Trebizond.* The
soldiers suffered in proportion to the quantity they
had eaten : some seemed drunken, some mad, and
some all but died. {Anah. iv. 8.) This quality in
the honey has been referred by Pliny and others to
the poisonous natiu'e of the rhododendron, which
aboimds in those parts ; but from inquiries which we
have made at Dropmore, and other spots aboimding
with this sln:ub, we cannot learn that any difference
is perceived in the honey of those districts, or indeed
that the common bee is ever seen to settle on its
flowers. If the Kalmia latifolia be a native of
Pontus, the danger is more likely to have arisen
from that soiu'ce, the honey derived from wliich has
been known to prove fatal in several instances in
America.

One remarkable circumstance about bees is the
number of conunodities of which they are either the
collectors or confectioners. Besides honey and wax.
there are two other distinct substances which they
gather, bee-bread and propolis.

Before we knew better, we thought, probably with
most of our readers, when we saw a bee " toUincf
from every flower the virtuous sweets," with his legs

* The same effect is also mentioned by Diodorus, Dioscorides,
Pliny, Strabo, iElian, and Procopius.

28 THE HO^^EY-BEE.

full of the dust of tlie stamens, that he was hurrying
home with the wax to build his cell, or at least with
the material wherewith to make that wax. We
thought of Titania and her fairies, who " for night
tapers crop their waxen thighs," and many other
pretty things that poets have said and sung about
them ; or if in a more prosaic mood, we at least con-
ceived that, if not fiimisliing fairy candles, they were
laying the foundation for what Sir F. Trench calls
" the gentleman's light." No such thing. Their
hollow legs were filled with the pollen or farina of
flowers, which has nothing whatever to do with the
composition of wax, but constitutes the ambrosia of
the hive — as honey does its nectar — their bee-bread,
or rather, we should say, bee-pap, for it is entirely
reserved for the use of their little ones. Old Butler
had so long ago remarked that " when they gather
abundance of this stuff (pollen) they have never the
more wax : when they make most wax, they gather
none of this." In fact they store it up as food for
the embryo bees, collecting from thirty to sixty
pounds of it in a season ; and in this matter alone
they seem to be " imthrift of their sweets," and to
want that shrewdness which never else fails them,
for they often, like certain over-careful housewives
with their preserves, store away more than they can
use, which, in its decomposition, becomes to them a
sore trouble and annoyance. They are said always
to keep to one kind of flower in collecting it, and the
light red colour of it will often detect them as the
riflers of the mignionette-bed : but we have seen

BEE-BREAD — WAX. 29

tliem late in the season with layers of different
colours, and sometimes their whole body sprinkled
with it, for they will at tunes roll and revel in a
flower like a donkey on a dusty road.

Whence, then, comes the wax ? It is elaborated
by the bee itself from the honey by a chemistry
beyond the ken of either Faraday or Liebig, being
exuded in small scales from between the armour-like
folds of their body. Tliis was noticed ahnost con-
temporaneously by John Hunter and Huber, and
confirmed by the most conclusive experunents of the
latter. A legal friend, to whom we are indebted for
much of our bee-law, thus records his own observa-
tion : — " I have often watched these fellows, hanging
apparently torpid, after, as I tliink, a plentiful meal.
Suddenly they make their whole persons vibrate like
the prong of a tuning-fork : you cannot see their out-
line. This is a signal for one of the wax-collectors
to run up quickly and fmnble the lately-agitated
gentleman with the instrmnents with which they hold
the wax ; and after collecting the scales, they hasten
to mould them into the comb." What would our
hon-vivans give if they could thus, at their pleasure,
shake off the effects of a Goldsmiths '-Hall dinner in
the shape of a temporary fit of gout and chalk-stones ?

Many in their schoolboy days, though we aver
ourselves to be guiltless, having too often followed
Titania's advice, and

" Honey-bags stolen from the humble-bee,"

need not to have much told them of how they carry

30 THE HONEY-BEE.

about them their liquid nectar. "Kill me," says
Bottom to Cobweb, " a red-hipped humble-bee on
the top of a thistle, and, good Monsieur, bring me
the honey-bag." They never swarm without a good
stock of honey in their inside, to enable them to
make a fair start in their new housekeeping. The
honey which they sip from the nectaries of the
flowers probably imdergoes some change, though it is
but a slight one, before it is deposited in the cells.
It was formerly considered a balm for all ills, though
now deemed anything but wholesome when eaten
in large quantities. The following are some of its
virtues, besides others which we omit, given by
Butler. It is only wonderful that our grandfathers,
living in the midst of such an universal medicine,
should have ever died.

" Honey cutteth and casteth up flegmatic matter, and
therefore sharpeneth the stomachs of them which by reason
thereof have little appetite : it purgeth those things which
hurt the clearness of the eyes ; it nourisheth very much ; it
breedeth good blood ; it stirreth up and preserveth natural
heat, and prolongeth old age : it keepeth all things uncorrupt
which are put into it ; and therefore physicians do temper
thercAvith such medicines as they mean to keep long ; yea
the bodys of the dead, being embalmed with honey, have
been thereby preserved from putrefaction," &c. &c.

The fourth product of the bee is propolis, or which
we shall rather call bee-gum. It is at once the glue
and varnish of their carpentry. With this resinous
substance * (quite distinct from wax) they fix their

* As a further proof of the minute attention with which the

HONEY — PROPOLIS. 31

combs to the sides and roof, fasten the liives to the
stand, stop up crevices, varnish the cell-work of
their combs, and embalm any dead or noxious animal
that they catch within their hive :

" Caulk every chink where rushing "winds may roar,
And seal their circling rampai-ts to the floor." — Ecans.

Bees may often be seen settling on the bark of the
fir, the gummy leaf of the hollyhock, or on the —
we dare not use Horace Walpole's expression —
varnished bud of the horse-chestnut. They are then
collectin£f neither bread nor honev, but oriim for the
purposes above mentioned. Huish mentions a case
of their coating over a dead mouse within the hive
with this giun, thus rendering thek home proof
against any impure effluvium ; but they were much
more cunning with a snail, which they sealed down,
onlj/ round the edge of the shell, thus fixing hun as a
standing joke, a laughing-stock, a living mmnmy
like Marmion's Constance, " alive within the tomb "
(for a snail, though excluded from air, would not
die), so that he who had heretofore carried his own
house was now made his own moniunent.

As one of the indirect products of the bee we must
not forget Mead, the Metheglin * of Shakspeare and
Dry den. It was the drink of the ancient Britons
and Norsemen, and filled the skull-cups in the Feast

ancients studied bees, the Greeks had three names at least for the
diiFerent qualities of this substance — npoTroAis, kopl/jluctis, and

TTKTffOKTJpOS.

* The derivation of this word, which one would rather expect to
be Celtic or Scandinavian, is very plausible, if not true, from the
Greek — fi40v alyX-fjev.

32 THE HOXEY-BEE-

of Shells in the Hall of Odin. In such esteem was
it held, that one of the old AVelsh laws ran thus :
*' There are three things in court which must be
commimicated to the king before they are made
known to any other person : — 1st. Every sentence of
the Judge. 2nd. Every new song. 3rd. Every
cask of Mead." Queen Bess was so fond of it, that
she had some made for her own especial drinking
every year; and Butler, who draws a distinction
between Mead and Metheglin, making Hydi'omel
the generic term, gives the following receipt for the
latter and better drink, the same used by " our
renowned Queen Elizabeth of happy memory."

" First gather a bushel of sweet-briar leaves and a bushel
of tyme, half a bushel of rosemari, and a pek of bay-leaves.
Seethe all these (being well washed) in a furnace of fair
water ; let them boil the space of an hour or better, and then
pour out all the water and herbs into a vat, and let it stand
till it be but milk-warm : then strain the water from the
herbs, and take to every six gallons of water one gallon of
the finest honey and put it into the boorne and labour it
together half an hour ; then let it stand two days, stirring it
well twice or thrice each day. Then take the liquor and
soil it anew, and when it doth seethe, skim it as long as
there remaineth any dross. When it is clear put it into the
vat as before, and there let it be cooled. You must then
have in a reddiness a kive of new ale or beer, which, as soon
as you have emptyed, suddenly whelm it upside down and
set it up again, and presently put in the Methgeglen and let
it stand three days a working ; and then tun it up in barrels,
tying at every tap-hoal (by a pack-thread) a little bag of
beaten cloves and mace to the value of an ounce. It must
stand half a year before it be drunk."

ITS EXEMIES.

The Romans softened their wine sometimes with
honey {G-eorg. iv., 102), sometimes with mead —
muho. (Hor., 1, 2, 4, 24.)

" The good bee," says More, *' as other good
people, hath many bad enemies ;" and though opinions
and systems of management have changed, the bees'
enemies have remained much the same from the
time of Aristotle. Beetles, moths, hornets, wasps,
spiders, snails, ants, mice, birds, lizards, and toads,
will all seek the hives, either for the warmth they
find there, or oftener for the bees, and, more fre-
quently still, for the honey. The wax-moth is a sad
plague, and when once a hive is infested with it,
nothing effectual is to be done but by removing the
bees altogether into a new domicile. Huish tells of
an old lady, who, thinking to catch the moths, illu-
minated her srarden and bee-house at niofht with
flambeaux — the only result of which was that,
instead of trapping the marauders, she burnt her own
bees, who came out in great confusion to see what
was the matter. The gi'eat death's-head moth
{Sphinx atropos), occasionally found in considerable
niunbers in our potato-fields — the cause of so much
alarm wherever its awful note and bado-e are heard
and seen — was noticed first by Huber as a terrible
enemy to bees. It was against the ravages of this
mealy monster that the bees were supposed to erect
those fortifications, the description and actual di'aw-
ing of which by Huber threw at one time so mucli
doubt on his other statements. He speaks of bas-
tions, intersecting arcades, and gateways masked by

D

34 THE HOXEY-BEE.

walls in front, so that tlieir constructors " pass
from the part of simple soldiers to that of engi-
neers." Few subsequent observers * have, we be-
lieve, detected the counterscarps of these minia-
tm'e Vaubans, but, as it is certain that they will
contract their entrance against the cold of winter,
it seems little incredible that they should put in
practice the same expedient when other necessities
call for it ; and to style such conglomerations
of wax and propolis bastions, and battlements,
and glacis, is no more unpardonable stretch of
the imagination than to speak of their queens and
sentinels.

An old toad may be sometimes seen sitting mider
a hive, and waiting to seize on such as, coming home
loaded with their spoil, accidentally fall to the
ground. We can hardly fancy this odious reptile
in a more provoking position. Tomtits, which are
called bee-biters in Hampsliire, are said to tap at
the hive, and then snap up the testy inmates who
come out to see what it is all about : if birds chuckle
as well as chirp, we can fancy the delight of this
mischievous little ne'er-do-good at the success of his
larh. The swallow is an enemy of old standing, as

* The ever-amusing Mr. Jesse says, ** I haA-e now in my possession
a regular fortification made of propolis, which my bees placed at the
entrance of their hive, to enable them the better to protect themselves
from the wasps." — Gleanings, vol. i. p. 24. It may have been with
some such idea that the Greeks gave the name " propolis," — " outwoi-k,"
to the principal material with which they constimct these bamcades ;
and Virgil has " munire favos." Did Byron allude to this in his

fracn'ant fortress " ?

THE SWALLOW. 00

we may learn from the verses of Euenus, prettily
translated by Merivale. *

*' Attic maiden, honey- fed,

Chirping warbler, bear'st away
Thou the busy buzzing bee
To thy callow brood a prey ?

Warbler thou, a warbler seize !

Winged, one with lovely wings !
Guest thyself, by summer brought,

Yellow guest whom summer brino's !"

Wilt not quickly let it drop ?

'Tis not fair, indeed 'tis wi-oncr,
That the ceaseless warbler should

Die by mouth of ceaseless tongue."

]\Iany are the fables and stories of the bear and
the bees, and the love he has for honey. One, not
so well known, we extract from Butler. The con-
teiir is one Demetrius, a Muscovite ambassador sent
to Eome.

" A neighbour of mine," saith he, " searching in the woods
for honey, slipped down into a great hollow tree : and there
sunk into a lake of honey up to the breast : where — when he
had stuck fast two days, calling and crying out in vain
for help (because nobody in the mean while came nigh that
solitary place) — at length when he was out of all hope of

* So stated by Cotton ; but on reference to the elegant volume of
• Bland's Collections from the Greek Anthology,' the last and best
edition of 1833, we find a different version assigned to Mr. Merivale.
Moreover, the prey of the swallow is there made the cicada, and not
the bee. We infinitely prefer the translation given in ' My Bee-book/
which yet falls so short of the epigranamatic turn of the original,
that we can only do justice to Euenus by adding the Greek : —

''At0£ Kopa neXiOpcTTTe, XaKov \d\os apvd^aaa,

N7]\eos aiTTriaiv Satrcl (pepeis TeKeaiv,
ToJ'Se \a\ov KaXosaax, rhv evimpou a TrTepoecrcro

Tou ^(vou a ^eiva, rhv Oepivhv Qepiva'
OvyX To-xos p'l^eis ; ov yap Q^fxis ouSe ZiKaiov

"OAAwcfl' v^voiroKovs v^voiroXois aToixaaiv.

d2

36 THE HONEY-BEE.

life, he was strangely delivered by the means of a great hear,
which, coming thither about the same business that he did, and
smelling the honey (stirred with his striving), clambered up
to the top of the tree, and thence began to let himself down
backward into it. The man bethinking himself, and know-
ing that the worst was but death (which in that place he was
sure off), beclipt the bear fast with both his hands about the
loins, and withal made an outcry as loud as he could. The
bear, being thus suddenly affrighted (what with the hand-
ling and what with the noise), made up again with all speed
possible : the man held, and the bear pulled until with main
force he had drawn Dun out of the mire ; and then, being let
go, away he trots, more afeard than hurt, leaving the smeared
swain in a joyful fear." — Butler, p. 115.

Tlie bear, from his love of lioney, acts as a pointer
to the bee-lumters of the North, who note the hollow
trees which he frequents and rubs against, knowing
thereby that they contain honey. " The bears,"
said a bee-hunter to Washington Irving, " is the
knowinsest varmint for findino- out a bee-tree m the
world. They'll gnaw for days together at the trunk
till they make a hole big enough to get in their
paws, and then they'll haul out the honey, bees and
all."

Wasps are sad depredators upon bees, and require
to be guarded against. The large mother-wasp,
which is often observed quite early in the spring, and
which conunon people call a hornet, should always
be destroyed, as it is the parent of a whole swarm.
In many places the gardeners will give sixpence
a-piece for their destruction, and bee-masters should
not refuse at least an equal amount of head-money.

BEES AND BEARS — WASPS. 37

These brazen-mailed invaders take good care never
to attack any but a weak hive : here they very soon
make themselves at home, and walk in and out in
the most cool, amusing manner possible. As an
instance of the extent to which their intrusion may
be carried, there was sent to the Entomological
Society, in July last, a very complete wasps'-nest,
found in the interior of a bee-hive, the lawful inha-
bitants of which had been put to flight by the
burglars.

" But not any one of these " (we quote from the old
fellow of Magdalen, from whom so many have bor-
rowed without acknowledgment), " nor all the rest
together, do half so much harm to the Bees as the
Bees." And here again they too truly represent
human nature. As riches increase, they set their
hearts the more upon them. The stronger the stock
is, the more likely are they to tm-n invaders, and of
course they fix upon the weakest and most resistless
of their brethi-en as the subjects of their attack.
Then comes the tug of war ; and a terrible struggle
it is. Here is an extract from Mr. Cotton's note-
book : —

" I was sitting quietly in the even of a fine day, "when my
sister came puffing into the room, ' Oh ! Willy, make hast€
and come into the garden, the bees are swarming ! ' ' Non-
sense,' I said ; ' they cannot be swarming ; it is August,
and four o'clock in the even.' Xevertheless I was bound,
as a loving brother, to see what grounds my wise sister had
for her assertion. I got up, went to the window, and, al-
though I was at least 400 yards from my bees, the air
seemed full of them. I rushed out to the garden ; the first

38 THE HONEY-BEE.

sight of my hive made me think my sister was right. On
looking more narrowly, I perceived that the bees were hur-
r}dng in, instead of swarming out ; and on peeping about, I
saw lying on the ground the

' defuncta corpora vita
Magnanimum heroum.'

They all had died fighting, as the play-book says, pro hares
et foxes. My thoughts then turned to my other stock,
which was about a quarter of a mile off, I ran to it as fast
as I could : hardly had I arrived there, when an advanced
body of the robber regiment followed me ; they soon thick-
ened ; I tried every means I could think of to disperse them,
but in vain : I threw dust into the air among the thickest ;
and read them the passage in Virgil, which makes the
throwing of the dust in the air equivalent to the Bees' Kiot
Act :—

* Hi motus animorum atque hsec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.' " — p. 319.

But all in vain. We know liow often this same
experiment lias failed, tliougli nothing can be more
true tlian tlie rest of Virgil's description of tlie
Battle of the Bees ; but dust is certainly efficacious
in causing them speedily to settle when they are
swarming, whether it is that the dust annoys them,
or that they mistake it for hail or rain.

There is yet one greater enemy than all, and that
is Man. And this leads us to consider the different
systems of management and harvesting which he has
adopted ; and some consolation it is that, various as
may be the plans proposed, there is only one excep-
tion, among the many bee-books we have lately read,
to the heartily expressed wish that the murderous
system of stifling the bees may be wholly condemned

VARIETY OF HR^ES. 39

and abolished. Indeed, if ]\Ir. Cotton's statement be
correct, England shares with the valley of Chamouni
the exclusive infamy of destroying the servants whose
toil has been so serviceable. Cobbett says it is
whimsical to save the bees, if you take the honey ;
but, on the other hand, to sacrifice them for the sake
of it, is killing the goose for her golden eggs. A
middle line is the safest ; take a part. First, be sure
that you leave enough to carry a stock fairly tlirough
the winter — say 30 lbs., hive and all — and the sru:-
plus is rightly yom' own, for the hives and the flowers
you have found them, and the trouble and time you
have bestowed. To devise such a method has
engaged the attention of English bee-masters for
many generations back ; and to eke out the hive by
a temporary chamber, which may be removed at
pleasiure, has been the plan most commonly pro-
posed. Dr. Bevan (pp. 115-120) gives a detailed
accomit of the different schemes, to which we refer
om- readers curious in such matters. There can be
but three ways of adding to a hive — first, at the top,
by extra boxes, small hives, caps, or bell-glasses,
which may be called generally the storifying system
— (we use the bee-man's vocabulary as we find it) ;
secondly, at the side, by box, &c., called the col-
lateral system ; and thirdly, by inserting additional
room at the bottom, called nadiring. To enter into
all the advantages and disadvantages of these plans
would be to write a volume ; we must therefore con-
tent ourselves with Dr. Bevan's general rule, which
we think experience fully bears out, that old stocks

40 THE HOXEY-BEE.

should be super ed and swarms be nadir ed. Side-
boxes are the leading feature of Mr. Nutt's plan,
about which so much has been written and lectured
— but that there is nothing new in this, the title of
a pamphlet published in 1756 by the Eev. Stephen
White, ' Collateral Bee-boxes,' will sufficiently
show. The object of Mr. Nutt's system is to pre-
vent swarming, which he seems to consider an unna-
tural process, and forced upon the bees by the nar-
rowness and heat of the hive, caused by an overgi'own
population. To this we altogether demur : the un-
natural part of the matter is that which, by inducing
an artificial temperatm-e, prevents the old Queen
from indulging her nomadic propensities, and, like
the Gothic sovereigns of old, heading the emigrating
body of her people. Moreover, with all his con-
trivances Mr. Nutt, or at least his followers, cannot
wholly prevent swarming — the old people still con-
trive to make their home "too hot" for the young
ones. But great praise is due to him for the atten-
tion which he has called to the ventilation of the
hive. Whatever be the system pm'sued, this is a
point that should never be neglected, and henceforth
a thermometer, much as the idea was at first ridi-
culed, must be considered an indispensable accom-
paniment to a bee-house. To preserve a proper
temperature within, the bees themselves do all they
can ; and it is quite refreshing to see them on a hot
day fanning away with their " many-twinkling "
wings at the entrance of the hive, while others are
similarly employed inside, creating such a current ('I

HOW BEES WORK. 41

aii'j that a taper applied to tlie inlet of tlie hive
would be very sensibly affected by it. Mr. Nutt's
book is worth reading for this part of the subject
alone : — but our own experience, backed by innu-
merable other instances within oiu' knowledge, is
unfavourable to the use of his boxes ; and even those
bee-keepers who continue them, as partially suc-
cessful, have not yet got over the disappointment
caused by his exaggerated statements of the produce.
Before entering further on the varieties of hives,
we must premise for the uninitiated that bees almost
invariably begin building their comb from the top,
continuing it down as far as room allows them, and
finishing it off at the bottom in a rather irregular
curved line. Each comb contains a double set of
honey-cells, dos-a-dos, in a horizontal position. To
support these in common straw hives cross-sticks are
used, around which the bees work, so that the comb
is necessarily much broken in detaching it from these
supports. Now, it having been observed that bees,
unless obstructed, always work their combs exactly
parallel, and at a certain distance apart, a hive has
been constructed somewhat in the shape of a common
straw one, only tapering more towards the bottom,
and having a lid lifting off just where the circum-
ference is the largest. On removing the lid are seen
thin wooden bars about an inch and a half apart, run-
ning parallel from the front to the back of the hive,
and these, being fixed into a ring of wood that goes
round the hive, are removable at pleasure. Now it is
obvious that, could we always get the bees to hang

42 THE HONEY-BEE.

their combs along tliese bars, the removal of one or
two of them at a time would be a very simple way
of procuring a fair share of honey witliout otherwise
disturbing the hive ; but how to. get the bees always
to build in this direction was the question. This
Huber solved : he fixed a small piece of comb under-
neath each of the bars exactly parallel ; the bees
followed their leader, so that any one of the pendent
combs might be lifted up on the bar, the bar be re-
placed, and the bees set to work again. This start-
ing-point for them to commence from is called the
guide-comb, and the hive itself, though somewhat
modified, we have the pleasure of introducing to our
readers as that of the Greek islands (Naturalist's
Library, p. 188) ; the very form, perhaps, from
which the Corycian old man, bringing it from Asia
Minor, produced his early swarms; — from which
Aristotle himself may have studied, — and which, no
doubt, made of the reeds or oziers of the Ilyssus,
had its place in the garden of Socrates —

*' That wise old man by sweet Hymettus' hill."

We must refer our readers to p. 96 of Dr. Bevan's
book for the later improvements upon this hive, as
respects brood and honey cells (for these are of dif-
ferent depths), and the fixing of the guide-comb,
suggested by Mr. Golding of Himton, who, together
with the Rev. Mr. Dunbar, has rendered very valu-
able assistance to Dr. Bevan's researches.

It is no slight reconunendation of Mr. Golding to
our good graces to learn that so practised a bee-

goldenTt's bar-hrte. 43

master lias discarded boxes from liis apiary, and
almost entirely restricted himself to tlie use of straw
hives, and this not from any fancy about their ap-
pearance, but from a lengthened experience of their
advantage. For om'selves, we dare hardly avow, in
this profit-loving age, how many pounds of honey
we would yearly sacrifice for the sake of preserving
the associations that throng aroimd a cottage-hive.
To set up in our humble garden the green-painted
wooden box, which Mr. Nutt calls " The Temple
of Nature," in place of our tune-honom-ed straw
hive, whose sight is as pleasant to om' eyes as " the
hum of murmm^ing bee " is to our ears ! — we had as
lief erect a Pantheon or a red-brick meeting-house
on the site of our village church. If our livelihood
depended on the last oimce of honey we could drain
from our stai-ving bees, necessity, which is a stem
mistress, might drive us to hard measmes, and,
secundum artem, they being used to it, we might
suffocate them " as though we loved them;" but to
give up — and after all for a doubtful or a dis-
advantage— the pleasant sight of a row of cleanly
hives of platted straw, the very form and fashion of
one of which is so identified with its blithe inha-
bitants, that without it a bee seems without its home
— to cast away as nought every childliood associa-
tion,— the little woodcut in Watts's ' H3rams,' — the
liive-shaped sugar-basin of the nursery, — the penny
■ print that we have covered with coatings of gamboge
— to lose for ever the sight of the new straw hackle
that jauntily caps it like the head-dress of an Esqui-

44 THE HONEY-BEE.

maux beau — to be no longer cheered in tlie hot
dusty city by the refreshing symbol that " babbles
of gi'een fields " in the midst of a hardwareman's
shop — this would be too much for us, even though
we might thus have assisted, as Mr. Huish would
say, " to unlock the stores of apiarian science, and
disperse the mists of prejudice by the penetrating
rays of philosophy." We would rather bear the
character of heathenish barbarism to the day of
our death, and have Hivite written on our tomb.
Seriously, it is no slight pleasure we should thus
forego; and pleasure, simple and unalloyed, is not
so cheap or so tangible a commodity in this life that
we can afford to throw away anything that produces
it, even though it hang but on the gossamer thread
of a fancy.

Apart, however, from all such considerations,
which, think and write as we may, would, we fear,
have but little influence with the practical bee-
keeper, we are convinced that the moderate tempe-
rature which a straw hive produces, both in smmner
and winter, will not easily be counterbalanced by
any other advantages which boxes ofier ; and as for
management, there is scarcely any system or form to
which straw may not be accommodated.

Those who have seen the beautiful bell-glasses
full of virgin honey from Mr. Nutt's hives, which
were exhibited lately either at the Polytechnic or-
Adelaide Gallery, and still more those who have
tasted them on the breakfast-table, may perhaps fancy
that boxes only can produce honey in so pure and'

XUTT — PAYNE — BAGSTER. 45

elegant a form ; but by a very simple alteration in
the common straw hive this may be effected, as a
reference to. Mr. Payne's ' Improved Cottage-liive '
will show. His book is a very useful one, from its
practical and concise directions, and perfectly free
from anything like being " got up." The only
fault of his hive seems to be its flat top.

Mr. Bagster's book chiefly recommends itself to
us by the promise of a new " Ladies' Safety Hive."
We are always a little shy of these schemes for
" Shaving made Easy," and " Every Man his own
Tooth-di-awer," which go to do away with the divi-
sion of labour, and bring every tiling " within the
level of the meanest capacity ;" and though nothing
certainly can be more in character than that the
lady-gardener should have her bee-house, where she
may observe the workuigs and habits of this " Femi-
nine Monarchy," yet, for aught we see, it is just as .
reasonable for her to clean her own shoes as to take
her own honey. And yet this is the only object or
new feature about Mr. Bagster's plan. Practically,
we should consider his centre box to be as much too
large as the side ones are too small.

The fact is, that safety from bees is not to be
gained by any modification of hi^'e or bee-dress
whatever. If a man means to keep bees, he must
make them his friends ; and the same qualities which
will ensiue him golden opinions in any other walk
of life are those which make a good bee-master.
Firmness of mind with kindness of manner will
enable you to do with them what you will. Like

46 THE HONEY-BEE.

horses, tliej know if you are afraid of them, and
will kick and plunge accordingly. Like children
and dogs, they find out in a moment if you are fond
of them, and so meet you half way. But, like the
best-tempered people in the world, there are times
and seasons when the least interruption will put
them out —

" ut forte legentem
Aut taciturn impellat quovis sermone molestus."

A sharp answer or a sharp sting on such occasions
will only be a caution that we must watch our
opportunity better for the future. He who rushes
between contending armies must not complain of
the flymg darts ; therefore in a bee-battle, unless
you are sure you can assist the weaker party, it is
best to keep out of the way. In very hot weather
and very high winds, especially if one has much to
do or to say, who does not feel a little testy?
Bees are the same. There is one other case where
interference is proverbially ill -taken — in domestic
quarrels ; and herein Mr. Cotton assm-es us that the
female spirit is as much alive in the bee as in the
hmnan kind. When the time comes in autumn for
turning the drones out of the hive (of which we
shall speak more fully presently), many think they
can assist their bees in getting rid of these unprofit-
able spouses, and so destroy them as fast as they are
turned out : this uncalled-for meddling is often very
fiercely resented, and the bee-keeper finds to his
cost, like the good-natured neighbour who profiered
his mediation on the " toast and bread-and-butter "

ITS TEMPER. 47

question of Mr. and Mrs. Bond, that volunteer peace-
makers in matrimonial strife

" Are sure to get a sting for their pains."

At all other times they are most tractable creatures,
especially when, as at swarming time, they are in
some measiu'e dependent on man's aid. They are,
as a villager once told us, '' quite hmnble bees then."
They imdoubtedly recognise their own master ; and
even a stranger, if a bee-keeper, soon finds hunself
at home with them. What they cannot bear is to
be breathed upon ; and as people ignorant of their
ways are very apt to begin buffeting and blowing
when bees seem disposed to attack them, it will be
serviceable for them to keep this liint in mind. The
Eev. John Thorley, who wrote in 1744, gives a
frightful account of a swarm of bees settling upon
his maid's head — the fear being not that they would
sting her to death, as stories have been told,* but
that they would stifle the poor girl, for they covered
her whole face. Presence of mind failed neither —
he bade her remain quite still, and searched for the
queen, whom her loyal people followed with delight
as he conducted her safe to her liive. Sometimes,
however, where presence of mind is wanting, or

* For fatal cases, one of whicli is related, by Mr. Lawrence, in his
Surgical Lectures, see Dr. Bevan, p. 333. Animals have been fre-
quently fatally attacked by them. Butler tells of " a horse in the
heat of the day looking over a hedge, on the other side of which was
a stall of bees : while he stood nodding with his head, as his manner
is, because of the flies, the bees fell upon him and killed him." This
exemplifies the proverb of the danger to some folk in "looking over a
hedge."

48 THE HOXEY-BEE.

where they have been accidentally disturbed, very
serious consequences ensue. The inhabitants of the
Isles of Grreece transport their hives by sea, in order
to procure change of pastiu'e for their bees. Huish
relates (p. 287) that

" Not long ago a hive on one of these vessels was overturned,
and the bees spread themselves over the whole vessel.
They attacked the sailors with great furj^ who, to save
themselves, swam ashore. They could not return to their
boat until the bees were in a state of tranquillity, having
previously provided themselves with proper ingredients for
creating a smoke, to suffocate the bees in case of a renewal
of their hostilit5^"

The Bee-volume of the ' Naturalist's Library '
supplies us with an anecdote, in which the anger of
the bees was turned to a more profitable purpose —

" A small privateer with forty or fifty men, having on
board some hives made of earthenware full of bees, was pur-
sued by a Turkish galley manned by 500 seamen and soldiers.
As soon as the latter came alongside, the crew of the priva-
teer mounted the rigging with their hives, and hurled them
dpwn on the deck of the galley. The Turks, astonished at
this novel mode of warfare, and unable to defend themselves
from the stings of the enraged bees, became so terrified that
they thought of nothing but how to escape their fury ; while
the crew of the small vessel, defended by masks and gloves,
flew upon their enemies sword in hand, and captured the
vessel almost without resistance." — p. 194.

It must strike the reader how well fm^nished this
vessel must have been to afford on the moment
" masks and gloves " for forty or fifty men. In
these disturbed times the following receipt to dis-

TAKIXG HONEY. 49

perse a mob may pertiaps be foimd useful. We have
heard of a water-engine being effectively employed
in the same service.

" During tlie confusion occasioned by a time of war in
1525, a mob of peasants, assembling in Hohnstein, in Tbu-
ringia, attempted to pillage the house of the minister of
Eleude, who, having in vain employed all his eloquence to
dissuade them from their design, ordered his domestics to
fetch his bee-hives and throw them in the middle of this
furious mob. The eflect was what might be expected ;
they were immediately put to flight, and happy to escape
unstung." — Xat, Lib., p. 195.

As we should be sorry to arouse the fears of our
readers, our object being rather to enamour them of
bees, we will console them — too much perhaps in
the fashion of Job's friends — with an anecdote which
appeared lately in a Scotch newspaper, of an elderly
gentleman upon whose face a swarm of bees alighted.
With great presence of mind he lifted up his hat,
hive-like, over his head, when the bees, by their
natiual instinct, at once recognizing so convenient a
home, betook themselves to liis head-gear — it siu-ely
must have been a ivide-aivake — which he then quietly
conveyed into his garden. Had he fidgeted and
flustered, as most old gentlemen — and yoimg ones
too — would have done in his situation, he would
doubtless have presented the same pitiable object
that our readers must remember in Hood's ludicrous
sketch of " an imfortunate Bee-ingJ^

One of the most dangerous services, as may well
be imagined, is that of taking their honey, when

£

50 THE HONEY-BEE.

this is attempted without suffocating, or stupefying,
or any of those other methods which leave the hive
free. This should be done in the middle of a fine
day when most of the bees are abroad ; and then in
those hives where the removal can be made from the
top the danger is more imaginative than real. The
common barbarous plan is to suffocate the whole
stock mth sulphm', and then, as dead men tell no
tales, and dead bees do not use theirs, it is very easy
to cut out the comb at your leism-e. But in any
case Mr, Cotton's plan is far preferable. Instead of
suffocatmg, he stupefies them. Instead of the brim-
stone match, he gathers, when half ripe, a fungus
(F. pulverulentus) which grows in damp meadows,
which coimtryfolk call " puff-balls," or ^' frog's
cheese," or "bunt," or " puckfist," dries it till it
will hold fire like tinder, and then applies it to the
hive in what he calls a " smoker." The bees beingr
thus rendered quite haiinless, any operation of the
hive, such as taking the honey, cutting out old comb,
removing the queen, or joming stocks, may be most
easily performed. The bees may be then handled
like a sample of grain. This plan of fimiigation —
which he does not profess himself the author of, but
to have borrowed from the work of the before-men-
tioned ]\Ir. Thorley, reprinted in the * Bee-book '
— we consider as the most valuable of the practical
part of Mr. Cotton's book, — practical, we mean, to
apiarian pm^poses ; for there is excellent advice
leavened up with the bee-matter, which will apply
equally to all readers. The rest of his system, with

COTTON S METHOD. 51

whicli we own ourselves to have been a little puzzled,
is too near an approximation to Nutt's to require
further explanation or trial. We should guess from
the present form of liis book — which, origmallj pub-
lished in the form of two ' Letters to Cottacrers from
a Conservative Bee-keeper,' is now sent forth in
one of the most elegant volumes that ever graced a
librarj-table — that he is convinced that liis plan is
not advantageous for the poor ; and therefore, thou^'h
upwards of 24,000 copies of his first 'Letters'
were sold, he has forborne to press fmther upon them
a doubtful good. This is, however, om- own con-
jecture entii-elj, from what we know of the failure
of his system among our friends, and from what we
gather of his own character in the pages of his book.
In this we think he has acted well and wiselj. De-
lighted as we ourselves have been with many parts
of Ms volume, we think he has failed in that most
difficult of all styles to the scholar — " writing down "
to the poor. In saying this we mean no dispara cle-
ment to Mr. Cotton, for we are not prepared at this
moment with the name of a single highly-educated
man who has completely succeeded in this task.
Bunyan and Cobbett, the two poor man's authors in
very difierent schools, came from the tinker's forge
and the plough-tail. It is not enough to write plain
Sa:^on and short sentences — though how many pro-
fessed writers for the unlearned neglect even points
like these ! — the mode of thinking must rmi m
the same current as that of the people whom we
wish to instruct and please, so that nothing short of

E 2

52 THE HONEY-BEE.

being one of them, or living constantly among
them,

" In joy and in sorrow, through praise and through blame,"

being conversant not only with their afflictions and
enjoyments, and ordinary life, but even with their
whims and crotchets, their follies and crunes, will fit
a man to be their book-friend. Where a million can
write for the few, there are but few Avho can write for
the million. Witness the imread pamphlets, written
and distributed with the kindliest feeling, that crowd
the cottager's shelf. We giieve that this a fact, but
we are convinced of the truth of it. We grieve
deeply, for there are hundreds of scholarly men at
this moment writing books, full of the best possible
truths for the lower — and indeed for all — classes of
this country, and thousands of good men distributing
them as fast as they come out, in the fond idea that
these books are working a change as extensive as
their circulation.* That they are doing good in many
quarters we gladly admit, but we will venture to say
that there is not one among the many thousands
published that will hold its rank as a cottage classic
fifty years hence ; and that not from want of interest
in the subjects, but of style and tone to reach the
poor man's heart. The mode of thought and ex-
pression in some of these well-meaning books is per-
fectly ludicrous to any one who has personal know-
ledge of a labourer's habit of mind. However, Mr.
Cotton's book, though not quite as successful as we

* The sale of such books is no test of their real popularity, as a
hundred are given to, where one is bought by, the poor.

cotton's " BEE-BOOK." 53

could wisli, is very far indeed from partaking of the
worst defects of books of this class. Indeed he has
so nearly reached the point at which he has aimed,
that we feel continually annoyed that he just falls
short of it. We do not think him happy in his
jokes, nor at home in his familiarity. From the
familiar to the twaddling is but a step, and a veiy
short step too. His Aristotle has taught him the
use of proverbs to the vulgar, which he has every-
where taken advantage of, though, with singular
infelicity, he has printed them in a character — old
English — that not one out of a hundred of the read-
ing poor can understand. He translates a bit of
Latin for the benefit of his " Cottager," but leaves
a quotation from Pindar to be Greek to him still !
It is, however, want of clearness and method — great
faults certainly in a didactic work — of which we
have chiefly to complain in his ' Short and Sunple
Letters ;' but, taking the work as it comes to us in
its present form, with its exquisite woodcuts, per-
fection of dress, prelude of mottoes (of which we
have not scrupled to avail ourselves), list of bee-
books (which, though imperfect, particularly as to
foreign works, is the first of the kind) — appendices
— reprints — extracts, &c. — we hardly know a book
of the kind that has of late pleased us more. The
ingenuity with which every ornament, within and
without, introduces either the bee itself, or its work-
manship, reflects great credit on the designer, and
on the engraver, Mr. J. W. Whimper, to whose
labours the author pays a well-earned compliment.

54 THE HOXEY-BEE.

Professing no sort of arrangement, it is the perfec-
tion of a scrap-book for tlie gentleman or lady bee-
keeper.

The great interest, however, in Mr. Cotton's work
lies in the conclusion. He is one of that noble crew,
mainly drafted from the ranks of aristocratic Eton,
that have gone out in the first missionary enterprise
that has left the shores of England, worthy of the
Chm'ch and the country that sent them. The good
ship Tomatin sailed from Plymouth for New Zea-
land on the 2 6 til of December 1841, St. Stephens
day, with a " goodly fellowship " of emigrants,
schoohnasters, deacons, and priests, ivitli a Bishop
at their head. And we, an Apostolic Chm^ch, have
been these many years in learning the first lessons of
Apostolic discipline and order ! wasting the lives
and energies of an isolated clergy — a few forlorn
hopes sent out without a commander to conquer the
strongholds of heathenism. However, it is never too
late to do well. The solemn ceremonial of the con-
secration of five bishops to the colonies, within the
walls of Westminster Abbey, which produced an
efiect on those who witnessed it which will not soon
pass away, and the great fm-ther increase in the
colonial episcopate which has since taken place, show
that the Church is not neglectful of her duties, though
these, like the Bishop of New Zealand, should have
led the van on the foundation of the colonies, instead
of following after a lapse of years, when the usurpa-
tions of schism and disorder have more than trebled
the difficulty of their task. There were among the

XEW ZEALAND MISSION". 55

crew of that gallant vessel — and not least of that
number, the chief Shepherd himself, and our author
Bee-master — men of the highest mental attainments,
of the gentlest blood, on whom our Public Schools
and Universities had showered their most honom'able
rewards, and to whom, had they remained m this
coimtry, the most splendid prospects opened — who
have yet borne to give up all these prospects and
sever all the ties of blood and old affection, to cross
at the call of the Chiu:ch, in the ser^dce of their
Master, half a world of ocean to an island unfre-
quented and barbarous, and where, for at least many
years to come, they must give up all idea, not of
luxury and comfort, but of what they have hitherto
deemed the very necessaries of existence ; and, what
is more to such men, the refinements of intellectual
intercourse and the charities of polished life. Gfod
forbid that we shoidd not have a heart to sympa-
thise also in the strucrgles of those uneducated and
enthusiastic, but often misguided men, who are sent
out with the Bible in their hand by voluntary asso-
ciations on a pitiable payment barely gTcater than
what they might have earned with their hands in
their own parish ! it is the system and the comfort-
able committee at home with which we quarrel, not
with the painful missionaries themselves ; but while
we grieve over the martyred Williams, we have
nothing in connnon with that sympathy which is
monopolised by the exertions of missionary artizans,,
enured from their cradle to a life of hardship, and
which can feel nothing for the tenfold deprivations^

56 THE HONEY-BEE.

mental and bodily, both in what tliey encounter and
what they leave behind, which the rich and the edu-
cated endure, who are authoritatively commissioned
to plant the standard of the Cross witliin the ark of
Christ's Church in our distant colonies. It becomes
us who sit luxuriously in our drawing-rooms at home,
reading the last new volume in our easy chairs, to
cast a thought from time to time on the labom's of
these men, of like tastes and habits with om'selves,
and encom-age them in their noble work, be it in
New Zealand or elsewhere, not only in good wishes
and easily-uttered " Godspeeds," but in denying
ourselves somewhat of our many daily comforts in
forwarding that cause which they have " left all" to
follow.*

But the connection which all this has with our
present subject is, that in the same ship with this
" glorious company," Mr. Cotton has taken out with
him fom' stocks of bees : the different methods of
storing away may be seen in page 357. Seizing,
and, we are sure, gladly seizing, a hint thrown out
in Mr. Pctre's book on New Zealand, of the great

* Great credit is due to the New Zealand Company, wlio have
consulted their interest as well as their duty in the liberality of their
Episcopal endowment. There can be no doubt that the establishment
there of a regular clergy will be a great inducement to the best class
of settlers to fix on such a spot for the port of their destination. A
large though inadequate sum having been already collected for the
general purposes of founding colonial bishoprics, we would now sug-
gest to our ecclesiastical rulers that separate committees should be
forthwith formed of persons interested in the several colonies, for in-
creasing to something like a proper sum Episcopal endowment for
furtliering the cause of the Church in each particular See. — [This sug-
gestion has not been thrown away. — Second Edition.]

COMMERCIAL VALUE. 57

honey-harvest in the native flowers, with no labourers
to gather it, he is carrying out the first bees which
have ever visited those islands. " I hope," he says —
and who does not join in this hope of Bishop Selwyn's
chaplain? — " that many a busy bee of mine will

Gather honey all the day
From every opening flower,

of Phormium tenax in New Zealand I hope,"

he adds, " a bee will never be killed in New Zea-
land, for I shall start the native bee-keeper in the
no-killing way ; and when they have learned to be
kind to them, they will learn to be more kind one
to another."

It is probable that the produce of the bees may be
made useful to the inhabitants themselves ; but we
much question whether any exportation can be made
of wax or honey. It is too far to send the latter ;
and, in wax-gathering, the domesticated hives can
never compete with the wild bees' nests of Africa,
which furnish much the largest amount for our mar-
kets. Sierra Leone, Morocco, and other parts of
Africa, produce four times as much wax for our
home consmnption as all the rest of the world toge-
ther. The only other country from which our sup-
ply has been gradually increasing is the United
States, and that is but small. The import of wax
altogether has been steadily declining: in 1839 it
came to 6314 cwts. ; in 1842 it was but 4483. The
importation, however, of honey has, in the last few
years, increased in an extraordinary degree ; 675
cwts. being entered in the year ending January,

58 THE HOXEY-BEE.

1838, and 3761 cwts. in 1842 : the foreign, West
Indies, Germany, and Portugal, having furnished
the greater part of this increased supply. The
honeys of Minorca, Narbonne, and Normandy are
the most esteemed in the markets for their wliite-
ness. We wish we could believe the decreased im-
portation of wax arose from the more extensive
cultivation of the bee in tliis country ; but we fear
that the daily — rather, nightly — diminishing show
of wax-candles on our neighboui's' tables, and the
murderous system of our honey-farmers, combined
with the increased consmnption of foreign honey —
tell a different tale. It would be a better sign of
bee-prosperity in England if the increase in the hn-
portation were removed from the honey to the wax ;
for the staple of the wax of commerce is the produce
of the wild bee — of the honey of commerce that of
the domesticated bee ; and it is a singular fact,
illustrating the history of these two species in rela-
tion to civilised and uncivilised man, that, wliile the
bushmen of the Cape look with jealousy on the in-
roads of cultivation, as destroying the haunts of the
only live-stock they possess, the Indians of America
consider the same insect as the harbinger of the
white man, and say that, in proportion as the bee
advances, the red man and the buffalo retire.

Washington Irving, in his ' Tour in the Prairies,'
says,—

" They have been the heralds of civilization, steadfastly
preceding it as it advanced from the Atlantic borders : and
some of the ancient settlers of the West pretend to give the

WILD BEES. 5y

very year when the honey-bee first crossed the Mississippi.
The Indians, with surprise, found the mouldering trees of
their forests suddenly teeming -with ambrosial sweets : and
nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy rehsh with which
they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of
the wilderness."

We liave spoken of tlie possibility of bee-pasturage
being over-stocked, and sucli may be tbe case in
certain localities in England ; but we are very con-
fident tliat tliis is not tlie general state of the
coimtry. We are assured that hives might be mul-
tiplied in England tenfold, and yet there would .be
room : certainly, more than five times the quantity
of honey might be taken. But then it will require
an improved system of management, more constant
attention paid to the hive, more liberal feeding in
spring and autiunn, and more active measm'es against
their chief enemies. In all these matters we must
look to the higher classes to take the lead. We
know many, both rich and poor, who do not keep
bees, on accomit of the murder they think them-
selves forced to commit : let such be assured that this
slaughter is not only unnecessary, but unprofitable
too. But, on the other hand, let no one fancy that
all he has to do is to procure a swarm and a hive,
and set it down in the garden, and that streams of
honey and money will forthwith flow. Bees, like
everything else that is worth possessing, require
attention and care. " They need," said a poor
friend of ours, "a deal of shepherding:" and thus,
to the cottager who can afford to give them his

60 THE HONEY-BEE.

time, tliey may be made a som'ce of great profit as
well as pleasm-e. Om- own sentiments cannot be
given better tlian in Mr. Cotton's words : —

" I would most earnestly beg the aid of the clergy and
resident gentry — but, above all, their good wives ; in a word,
of all who wish to help the poor who dwell round about them
in a far humbler way, yet perhaps not less haj^pily ; I would
beg them, one and all, to aid me as a united body in teach-
ing their poor neighbours the best way of keeping bees. . . .
A row of bees keeps a man at home ; all his spare moments
may be well filled by tending them, by watching their won-
drous ways, and by loving them. In winter he may work
in his own chimney corner at making hives, both for himself
and to sell. This he will find almost as profitable as his
bees, for well-made hives always meet with a ready sale.
Again, his bee-hives are close to his cottage-door ; he will
learn to like their sweet music better than the dry squeaking
of a pothouse fiddle, and he may listen to it in the free air,
with his wife and children about him."

The latter part of tliis lias, we fear, a little too
much of the green tint of Arcadia. It is seldom
indeed that you can get a husbandman to see the
peculiar excellences and beauties of his own little
world ; though it is only fair to add, that where you
find the exception, the bee-master is for the most
part that man. The gi-eat matter is to get the man
who does love '* the dry squeaking of the pothouse
fiddle," and the wet potations that succeed thereon,
to keep bees : and this can only, and not easily then,
be done by showing him the profit. Fair and good
housewives — if ye be readers of the Quarterly — don't
bore him with long lectures ; don't heap upon him

BEE-KEEPING. 61

many little books ; but give liim a liive of the best
construction — show liim the management — and then
buy his honey ; buy all he brings, even though you
should have to give the surplus to some poor garden-
less widow. But only buy such as comes from an
improved hive — and you can't easily be deceived in
this — which preserves the bees and betters the
honey.

Then, when you pay him, you may read to him,
if you will, the wise rules of old Butler — exempli
gratia : —

" If thou wilt have the favour of thy bees that they sting
thee not, thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly ; thou
must not come among them having a stinking breath, caused
either through eating of leeks, onions, garlic, or by any other
means ; the noisomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of
beer ; thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness :
thou must not come puffing and blowing unto them, neither
hastily stir among them, nor violently defend thyself when
they seem to threaten thee ; but, softly moving by, thy hand
before thy face, gently put them by : and, lastly, thou must
be no stranger to them. In a word, thou must be chaste,
cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar : so will they love
thee, and know thee from all other."

He makes a very proper distinction, which our
Teetotal Societies would do well to observe, between
"a cup of beer" and " drimkenness ;" and indeed
there seems to be a kind of bee-charm in a moderate
draught, for Mr. Smith, a dry writer enough in
other respects, says, " Your hive being dressed, rub
over your hands with what beer and sugar is left,
and that will prevent the bees from stinging them ;

62 THE HOXEY-BEE.

also drink the other half -pint of heer, and tliat will
very mucli lielp to preserve your face from being
st\mg. (p. 34.)

We liold to the opinion already expressed of
presence of mind being the best bee-dress, notwith-
standing the anecdote told of M. de Hofer, Con-
seiller d'Etat du Grand Due de Baden, who, having
been a great bee-keeper, and almost a rival of Wild-
man in the power he possessed over his bees, found,
after an attack of violent fever, that he could no
more approach them without exciting their anger —
in fact, " when he came back again, they tore him
where he stood." " Here, then, it is pretty evident,"
says the doctor who tells the story, "that some change
had taken place in the Coimsellors secretions, in
consequence of the fever, which, though not notice-
able by his friends, was offensive to the olfactory
nerves of the bees." Might not a change have taken
place in the Counsellor's nerves ?

As Critics as well as Counsellors may be stmig, we
have, for our own good and that of the public,
examined all the proposed remedies, and the result
is as follows : — Extract at once the sting, which is
almost invariably left behind : if a watch-key is at
hand, press it exactly over the wound, so that much
of the venom may be squeezed out ; and in any case
apply, the sooner of com'se the better, laudaniun, or
the least drop of the spirit of ammonia. Oil and
honey, which are also recommended, probably only
act in keeping off the air from the woimd. The cure
varies very much with the constitutions of indi-

STIXGS — rOOR M.VX'S- STOCK. G3

viduals ; but the poison being acid, any alkali will
probably be sen'iceable.

But, with reference to the cottager, we must con-
sider the profit as well as the sting ; and this it will
be far better to underrate than exaofg-erate. Tell a

CO

poor man that his bees, with the most ordinary care,
will pay his rent, and he will find that yoiu: word is
good, and that he has something to spare for his
trouble ; he may then be led to pay the same respect
to his little lodgers as the Irish do to the less cleanly
animal that acts the same kind part of rent-payer by
them. But when the marvellous statistics of bee-
books are laid before a labourer, their only efiect can
be to rouse an imwonted sphit of covetousness, wliicli
is more than pimished by the still greater disappomt-
ment that ensues. Here follows one of those quiet
statements, put forth with a modest complacency that
out-Cobbetts Cobbett : —

" Suppose, for instance, a swarm of bees at the firt^t to
cost 10s. 6d., to be well hackled, and neither them nor their
swarms to be taken, but to do well, and swarm once every
year, what vnll be the product for fourteen years, and what
the profits, of each hive sold at 10s. 6d. ? —

Profits.

STears.

Hives.

£.

s.

d.

1

1

-

0

0

0

2 _

o

-

1

1

0

3

4

-

2

2

0

4

8

-

4

4

0

5

16

-

8

8

0

6

32

-

16

16

0

7 —

64

-

33

12

0

S

12b

-

67

4

0

t)4

THE HONEY-BEE.

Profits,

Years.

Hives.

£. s.

d.

9

256

134 8

0

10

512

268 16

0

11

1024

537 12

0

12

2048

1075 4

0

13

4096

2150 8

0

14

8192

4300 16

0

" N.B. Deduct 10s. Gd., what the first hive cost, and the
remainder will he clear profit, supposing the second swarms
to j)ay for hives, hackles, labour, &c."

Mr. Thorley, from whose book the above state-
ment is taken, had better have caiTied it on three
years tether, which would have given him within
a few pomids of 35,000?. — a very pretty fortime for
a cottager's eldest daughter : the only difficulty would
be to find the father-in-law who had a heart to re-
nomice a capital that doubled itself every year. It
is like Cobbett's vine, that on a certain system of
management was to produce so many upright stems,
and from each of these so many lateral branches, and
on each lateral so many shoots, and on each shoot so
many buds, and every bud so many bunches and
pounds of grapes — so that you might count the quan-
tity of wine you were to make on the day that you
planted the tree. There is nothing like an array of
figures if you wish to mislead. All seems so fair,
and clear, and demonstrative — no appeals to the pas-
sions, no room for a quibble — that to deny the con-
clusion is to deny that two and two make four. Yet,
for all this, the figures of the arithmeticians have
produced more fallacies than all the other figures of

PROFIT. 65

tlie Schools. We would infinitely prefer tlie errors
of the enthusiast to the unrelenting numbers of the
mathematician, and. the charitable laxity of the rule
of thumb to the pert precision of the Rule of Three.
We shall enter, therefore, into no exact calculation
of profit and loss, which is, after all, ahnost entirely
dependent on the seasons and the degree of care
bestowed. Statistics, such as Mr. Thorley's, might
just be as well applied to the stock of graziers with-
out any consideration of the nmnber of acres they
held ; for he gives us no receipt how to find pastiu:-
age for 8000 bee-hives.

Dr. AVarden, a physician of Croydon, who wrote
in the year 1712 a book called ' The True Amazons,
or the Monarchy of Bees,' — and of whom we can
discover nothing more than that the front of his bee-
house was " painted with lions and other creatures
not at all agreeable " — found the neighbouring fiuze
of Coombe and Purleynot " unprofitably gay," if we
may believe his assertion that his bees brought him
in 4:01. a year : he might have passed rich at that
time in such a locality, if his physician's fees brought
liim in an equal smn. That the ancients did not
neglect the profit to be derived from their hives, we
learn from Virgil's old gardener — to whoin we can-
not too frequently reciu: — and from two veteran
brothers mentioned by Yarro — the type perhaps of
the Cor)xian of the Georgics — who tm-ned the little
villa and croft left them by their father into a bee-
house and bee-garden — realising, on an average,
10,000 sesterces a-year. They seem to have been

66 THE HONEY-BEE.

thrifty old baclielors, and took care to bide a good
market. Among the plunder of Verres were 400
amphorae of honey.

We will now suppose that, having made up our
mind on the matter of profit, and being sting-proof,
we have got in an old-fashioned straw hive, a stock
wliicli we purchased in autumn for a guinea, safely
placed under our heath-thatched bee-house ; that we
have also got one of the unproved Grecian straw hives
ready to house the first swarm in. Some fine warm
morning in May or June, a cluster of bees having
hung out from the hive some days before, the whole
atmosphere in the neighbourhood of the bee-house
seems alive with thousands of the little creatures,
whirling and buzzing, passing and "repassing, wheel-
ing about in rapid circles like a group of maddened
Bacchanals. This is the time for the bee-master to be
on the alert. Out runs the good housewife with the
frying-pan and key — the orthodox instruments for
riyiging — and never ceases her rough music till the
bees have safely settled in some neighbouring bough.
This custom, as old as the birth of Jupiter, is one of
the most pleasing and exciting of the coimtryman's
life ; Hogarth, we think, introduces it in the back-
ground of his ' Country Noises,' and there is an old
coloured print of bee-ringing still occasionally met
with on the walls of a country inn that has charms for
us, and makes us think of bright sunny weather in
the dreariest November day. We quite feel with
Mr. Jesse that we should re^et to find this £^ood old
custom fill into disrepute. Whether, as Aristotle

" ri:n^ging." 67

says, it affects them tlu'ougli pleasure, or fear, or
whether indeed they hear at all, is still as uncertain
as that philosopher left it, but we can wish no better
luck to every bee-master that neglects the tradition
than that he may lose every swann for which he
omits to raise this time-honoured concert.*

The whole matter of swarming is so important,
that we should be doing wrong to pass it over with-
out giving the following graphic account from the
* Naturalist's Library ;' —

" The laying of drones' eggs ha^nng termmatecl, the queen,
previously large and unwieldy, becomes slender in her figure
and more able to fly, and begins to exhibit signs of agitation.
She traverses the hive impatiently, abandoning the slow and
stately step which was her wont, and in the course of her
impetuous progress over the combs she communicates her
agitation to the workers, who crowd around her, mountino-
on her back, striking her briskly with their antenna, and
evidently sharing in her impatience. A loud confused noise
is heard throughout the hive, and hardly any of the workers
are observed going abroad to forage ; numbers are whirlino-
about in an unsettled manner in front of the hive ; and the
moment is come, to a considerable portion of the family, for

* The story goes that the Curetes, wishing to hide the birth of
Jupiter from his father Saturn, set up a clashing of cymbals to drown
the noise of his infant cries : —

" Cum pueri circiim puenim peiTiice chorea
Armati in numerum pulsarant aeribus sera."

Lucret. ii. 635.

The noise attracted a swaiTQ of bees to the cave where the child was
hid, and their honey nourished him : hence the origin of ringing,
AoKovai Se xai'peij/ at /xeAiTxat Koi tw Kporcp' k. t. A. — Aristot. If.
An., p, 299. " Siquandu displicatje simt, cymbalis et plausibus
numero reducunt in locum imum." — Vanv, R. B., iii. 16, 7.

" Tinnitusque cie, et Matris quate cymbala circiim."

Georg. iv. 64.

p2

68 THE HONEY-BEE.

bidding adieu to their ancient abode. All at once the noise
of the interior ceases, and the whole of the bees about the
doors re-enter ; while those returning loaded from the fields,
instead of hurrying in as usual, hover on the wing, as if in
eager expectation. In a second or two, some workers present
themselves again at the door, turn round, re-enter, and
return instantaneously in additional numbers, smartly
vibrating their wings, as if sounding the march ; and at this
signal the whole swarm rushes to the entrance in an over-
whelming crowd, streaming forth with astonishing rapidity,
and filling the air in an instant, like' a dark cloud overhang-
ing their late habitation. There they hover for a moment,
reeling backwards and forwards, while some of the body
search in the vicinity for a tree or bush which may serve as
a rallying point for the emigrants. To this they repair by
degrees, and, provided their queen has alighted there, all, or
at least the greater part, crowd around, and form a dense
group, sometimes rounded like a ball, sometimes clustered like
a bunch of grapes, according to the nature of the resting-
place they have fixed on." — p. 138.

This first settlement is, without doubt, merely a
rendezvous before their final emig-ration. If not
hived they will soon be off, and in a direct line, for
some convenient spot which has been marked by
them before. We have known them make straight
for an old hollow pollard, the only one to be fomid
within a mile or two of the hive. The old queen
always accompanies the first swarm ; and for this a
fine day is reckoned more necessary than for the
after-swarms, as it is the old lady, says Mr. Golding,
that shows the Greatest dislike to leave home in bad
weather. If this swarm again sends forth a colony
the same year, it is the same queen again who puts

SWARMIXG. 69

herself at the head of her nomade subjects. Indeed,
notwithstanding Mr. Golding's remark, there is very
little of the old woman about her.

There seems to be no im.erring method by which the
exact tune when the first swarm will leave the hive
can be determined — their hanging from the entrance
being very fallacious — • except by watching the
general state of things witliin. With the after-
swarms, however, there is a most cm'ious and certain
sign in the " piping " or " trumpeting " of the queen
and the princesses, to which we have before referred.
About the ninth day from the issue of the first swarm,
if another colony is about to leave the hive, this
singular duet, in most regiilar intonation, between
the emerged queen and the princess still a prisoner
in her cell, is heard ; and, extravagant as the
account may seem, and confused and embellished as
it has been from the times of Aristotle and Virgil
till recent days, it is now the practical sign by
which every attentive bee-keeper judges of the thiie
of emigration of the after-swarms.

The second swarm is called a " cast," * the third
a " smart," the fourth a " squib." A swarm from
a swarm is called a " maiden or virgin swarm," and
the honey is reckoned more pm'e. It seldom, how-

* The following dogged " proverbial philosophy " will give the
supposed relative values of early and late swaims : —

" A swarm in May
Is worth a load of hay ;
A swarm in June
Is worth a silver spoon ;
A swann in July
Is not worth a fly."

70 THE HONEY-BEE.

ever, happens that there are more than two from the
same hive, except in such a year as the present,
which has been a glorious bee-year. Such also was
1832 ; and there are on an average two good years
in every ten. 1838 and 1839 were particularly
disastrous to the bees.

It is time to say something of Her Majesty of the
Hive. She is the mother as well as queen of her
people, laying from 10,000 to 30,000 eggs in a year,
and it is not till she gives symptoms of contmuing
the race that the full tide of her subjects' affection is
poured forth towards her. They prefer a Victoria
t9 an Elizabeth. There are different cells formed
for the queen, the worker, and the drone, and she
deposits eggs in each accordingly. The bees, like a
wise and loyal people as they are, do not stint their
sovereign to the same naiTow mansions as content
themselves ; they build their royal cells much
thicker and stronger, and of more than twice the
size : nay, unlike the surly blacksmith at Brighton,
who hesitated to give up his house for the conveni-
ence of his sovereign, they think notlimg of pulling
to pieces and converting several of their common
cells when royalty requires it, and vote with alacrity
in their committee of supply every demand made
for the extension and improvement of their sove-
reign's palace. When finished, their miniature
Wmdsors resemble the inverted cup of an acorn
somewhat elongated. We said that each has its pe-
culiar cells, and that the queen lays only drone eggs
in drone cells, and so on. But it has happened,

BREEDING. 71

either in her flurry or from some unaccountable acci-
dent, that a drone egg has fallen into a royal cell.
Time goes on, and the egg swells, and becomes a
larva, and then a pupa, and the bees feed it with
royal food, watch its progress with anxious care, and
hover in the antechamber in nervous expectation of
the royal birth — ^judge then their surprise when, in-
stead of a princess royal, out walks the awkward and
mystified changeling of a drone. Their mnate and
extreme sense of loyalty does not at first allow them
to discover their mistake ; they crowd round about
him, backing with reverence, as they always do in
the presence of their real queen : meanwhile the
foolish fellow, addled by their homage, and yet
chuckling at his unexpected dignity, turns himself
about with the incredulous stare of Hassan the
sleeper when he awoke in the palace and robes of
the khalif, and, with the strut of dear old Listen in
the ' Illustrious Stranger,' so soon commits himself by
his ungainly actions, that they quickly find out their
error, and tm-n from him in unmitigated disgust.
This scene has been actually observed.

It would be an endless work to recount the many
stories told of the devoted attaclmient of these good
people to their queen. Her presence among them
is their life and glory. She is the mainspring upon
wliich all their work, their order, their imion, their
happiness seems to turn. Deprive them of her, and
all is confusion, disorder, and dismay. They seem
to mourn for her when dead, and can with difficulty
be withdrawn from her corpse. The following ex-

72 THE HONEY-BEE.

tract from a private letter describes such a scene as
all bee-books are f\ill of: —

" Last year I was sent for by a lady, wLo, when she wants
my assistance, sends all over the parish for me with a little
note with the picture of three bees in it, and this calls me at
once to her aid. One of her bee-hives — a glass one — I
found when I arrived in a state of the greatest confusion, the
inmates running up and down, and making a fearful noise.
"We soon discovered the reason of this. On looking about
the bee-house, we observed her majesty quietly taking an
airing abroad unknown to her subjects, — she had got through
a hole which had been left for air. "We thought it was time
for her majesty to return home, so we quietly put her back
to her subjects. Where all had been confusion perfect peace
instantly prevailed — the news was communicated in a mo-
ment— the pleasure of the little loyalists was manifested by
a gentle placid motion of their wings, and they returned
forthwith to their former labours."

In tliis case tbe queen had slipped out by a back
door, w^ishing no doubt to enjoy that privacy and
quiet which royalty so often sighs after : at other
times, when she walks out in public, she meets with
that respectful homage and freedom from interrup-
tion which may read a good lesson to the British
public.

" There I saw the old Queen bee walking round the stone
at the mouth of the hive as if she was taking an airing, and
of all the sights I ever saw in my life nothing ever pleased
me better. I would not have lost seeing it on any account
— to witness them pay homage to her as she walked round
in the open air pleased me exceedingly." — Smith, p. 94.

" Whenever the Queen goes forth to take the air, as she
often does, many of the small bees attend upon her, guard-
ing her before and behind. By their sound I have known

ITS LOYALTY. 73

when her majesty has heen coming forth, and have had time
to call persons who have been desirous of seeing her." —
Sydserff, ch. iii.

With the alteration of a few words, Avho would
not think this the description of the Terrace at
Windsor, or the Chain-pier at Brighton, and of the
English people when on their best behaviom ? All
the wondeiful tricks with which Wildman the bee-
conjurer astonished the last generation were effected
by taking advantage of their instinctive loyalty. He
made the bees follow him where he would, hang first
on this hand, then on that, or settle wherever his
spectators chose. His secret consisted in having
possession of the queen, whom they clustered round
wherever he might move her. Nor are they merely
summer friends ; the workers will defend their
queen in the utmost strait, and lay down their lives
for her. For they sting but once, and that sting is
death to them ; " Animasque in vulnere ponimt."
How many a hmnan sovereign has been left in his
last hours by those who had basked in the simshine
of his power ! The bees teach us a better lesson.
Dr. Evans, whose poem of ' The Bees,' though some-
times rather Darwinian, is extremely interesting
and true to nature, gives in his notes tliis affecting
anecdote : —

" A queen in a thinly-peopled hive lay on a honeycomb
apparently dying ; six workers surrounded her, seemingly in
intent regard ; quivering their wings as if to fan her, and
Avith extended stings, as if to keep off intruders or assailants.
On presenting them honey, though it was eagerly devoured

74 THE HONEY-BEE.

by the other bees, the guards were so completely absorbed in
their mournful duty, as entirel}'" to disregard the proffered
banquet. The following day the queen, though lifeless, was
still surrounded by her guard ; and this faithful band of
attendants, as well as the other members of the family, re-
mained at their post till death came kindly to extinguish
both their affection and their grief ; for though constantly
supplied with honey, not a bee remained ahve at the end of
four days."

We must not, liowever, invariably expect the
same conduct; perhaps, indeed, if it were so, it
would lower the quality of the feeling, and reduce
it to too mechanical an instinct. Bees, like men,
have their different dispositions, so that even their
loyalty will sometimes fail them. An instance not
long ago came to our knowledge, which probably
few bee-keepers will credit. It was that of a hive,
which, having early exliausted its store, was fomid,
on being examined one morning, to be utterly de-
serted: — the comb was empty, and the only symp-
tom of life was the poor queen herself, " unfriended,
melancholy, slow," crawling over the honeyless cells,
a sad spectacle of the fall of bee greatness. Marius
among the ruins of Carthage — Napoleon at Fontaine-
bleau — was nothing to this.

That the mother of so large a family and queen of
so rich a store passes her honeymoon somewhere may
be reasonably supposed, but such is her innate mo-
desty that the time and scene of her matrimonial trip
are still involved in the utmost mystery. Whether
she loves the pale moonlight, or whether, as we are

QUEEX-MAKIXG. 75

Inclined to suppose with Huber, she prefers a bright
May morning, and, Hero-like, lights her torch of
love on high, in either case she scrupulously shims
the cm'ious eye of man, who has in vain endeavoured
to pry into those mysteries which she as industriously
conceals.

If it should be thought siu'prising that men who
have devoted their lifetime to studying the habits of
bees have failed to come to any satisfactory conclu-
sion on this subject, it will be far more a matter of
wonder to learn what they have been enabled to
discover. We allude particularly to the power pos-
sessed by the workers, when they have lost their
natural monarch, of convertino- the crmb of one of
the common bees into a royal, and consequently pro-
lific personage. Such an extraordinary assertion,
first published by Schirach, though probably known
in earlier times, may be supposed to have met with
no ordinary opposition, but it has been confirmed by
repeated observation and experiment, and is as well
attested — thanks to Huber especially — as any such
facts can ever be. Being so established, we may
assert it to be (without any reservation whatever) by
far the most extraordinary fact ever brought to light
in natural history. Fully to comprehend it, we
must refer om- readers to the great differences we
stated in the former part of this paper to exist be-
tween the workers and the queen, or rather to the
more minute anatomical distinctions given by ento-
mological writers ; and then they are called upon to
believe that, by enlarging tliree common cells into one,

76 THE HONEY-BEE.

and feeding tlie worm, not more tlian three days old,
witK a peculiar food, richer tlian the common bee-
bread — called, from its queen-making qualities,
''royal jelly," — not only is its body lengthened, its
wings shortened — its w^ax-pockets, and its bread-
basket and the down on its legs obliterated — its
sting and proboscis altered in shape — its fertility
developed — but all its instincts and habits so com-
pletely changed, that no difference whatever is
observable, when it emerges from the cell, from the
rightful queens, either in the character and duties it
assumes, or in the reverence paid it by the masses.
Wliat would not Napoleon, when he assmned the
pm'ple, have given for some jars of this " royal

jelly ! " .

We much wish that we had space to describe at
length the jealousy and combats of rival queens, the
senses of bees, and their architecture, and general
economy of the hive ; but half the interest of these
things depends on that freslmess and minuteness of
detail which is best given in the words of the ori-
ginal eye-witnesses. It is only by a figure that we
can include in this class hun who has deservedly
been placed at the head of all writers upon bees —
the intelligent and enthusiastic Francis Huber. No
one who ever hopes to be master of a bee-house
should be ignorant of his services, nor of the diffi-
culties under which he performed them. His name
has been so long before the public that many will
learn with surprise that he died, at the age of eighty-
one, so late as December, 1831. An appropriate

FRAXCIS HUBER. 77

tribute* has been paid to his memory by his brother
naturalist De Candolle, from which the following
facts of his life are taken.

Among the witty and the vain who formed Voltaire's
applauding clique at Ferney was one who, though
remarkable in his o^ti day even in so brilliant an
assemblage for his conversation and accomplishments
of society, would scarcely have been remembered but
for his more illustrious son. This was John Huber,
the father of liim who is the Father of Bee-masters ;
and Francis himself probably enjoyed the honour, at
whatever that may be rated, of being patted on the
head by the patriarch of Femey : for he was a pre-
cocious and enthusiastic child, and the pride of his
father, who imparted to him that love of science
which, while it produced the misfortime, proved
also the comfort of his life. One of his relations had
ruined himself in the search after the philosoplier's
stone ; and he hunself impaired God's greatest bless-
ing of sight at the early age of fifteen, by the ardoiu"
with which he devoted himself to philosophical stu-
dies. His father sent him to Paris to be imder the
care of the most experienced physicians ; but though
his general health, which had also given way, was
restored by the sensible prescription of rmal life and
diet, the cataract baffled the skill of the oculist
Venzel, and he was sent home with no better pro-
mise than that of a confirmed and increasino^ blind-

* Translated in the Edin. N. Philosoph. Journal for April, 1833.
De Candolle has also named a genus of Brazilian trees, in his honour,
Huheria laurina. It should hare been a bee-plant.

78 THE HONEY-BEE.

ness. " His eyes, however," says his biographer
De CandoUe, " notwithstanding their weakness, had,
before his departure and after his return, met those
of Maria Aimee Lullin, a dausfhter of one of the
syndics of the Swiss republic. They had been com-
panions at the lessons of the dancing-master, and
such a mutual love was cherished as the age of seven-
teen is apt to produce." It was far too deep and too
true an affection to run smooth. The father of the girl
naturally regarded the growing blindness of the
youth as destructive of all advancement in life, and
positively forbade his suit. Meanwhile poor Huber
dissembled his increasmg infirmity as well as he
could, and, with a pardonable fraud, spoke as though
he could really see. There was at least language
enough in his eyes for Maria Lullin, and she, as
resolute as her father, would allow no subsequent
misfortmie to quench the light of other and happier
days. At twenty-five, and not till then, did the
law allow her to decide for herself, and seven long
years was a dangerous trial for any girl's fortitude,
beset with the remonstrances of her friends, and the
daily vanishing hopes of restoration of sight to her
lover. But she was nobly faithful. She was proof
against all persecutions and persuasions ; and when
the seven weary years were at length over, she gave
her hand where her heart had been given long before
— to him who, though her husband, could scarcely
act the part of her protector. The youthful partners
at the dancing-academy naturally ripened, as our
Scotch friends can best understand, into partners for

BURNENS. 79

life. And she became not only Hubcr's wife, but
bis assistant in bis researches ; she was " eyes to the
blind," his reader, his secretary, his observer.

No higher praise can be given to Huber than to
say that he was worthy of her. He was the most
affectionate and devoted of husbands.

*' Her voice was all the blind man knew,
But that was all in all to him !"

" As long as she lived," he used to say in his old
age, " I was not sensible of the misfortune of being
blind." And, alluding to her small statm^e, he would
apply to her the character of his favom^ite bees,

" Ingentes animos angusto in pectore versant."

It was, we believe, this true story that furnished the
episode of the Belmont family in Madame de Stael's
* Delphine.'

Huber was fortunate not only in his wife but in
his servants and children. Burnens, who imder his
tuition and direction made the greater part of his
observations upon bees for him, has this due tribute
paid him by his master and his friend : —

" It is impossible to form a just idea of the patience and
skill with which Burnens has carried out the experiments
which I am ahout to describe. He has often watched some
of the working-bees of our hives, wliich we had reason to
think fertile, for the space of four-and-twenty hours without
distraction, and without taking rest or food, in order to
surprise them at the moment when they laid their eggs. I
frequently reproached myself for putting his courage and his
patience to such a trial ; but he interested himself quite as
much as I did in the success of our experiments, and he

80 THE HONEY-BEE.

counted fatigue and pain as nothing in comparison with the
great desire he felt to know the results. If then there he
any merit in the discoveries, I must share the honour Avith
him ; and I have great satisfaction in rendering him this act
of public justice."

We gladly give a place to tKis generous testimony,
because, in tlie translation wliicli we liave seen of
Huber's work, tbe preface which contains it is alto-
gether omitted ; and it is only right that this faithful
and mtelligent man should share whatever of earthly
immortality belongs to the name of his master. But
the present reward of such an one, and we may add
of his wife and children, who equally shared in those
studies which served to alleviate his misfortune,
must have been found in the answer of a good con-
science and the cheerful gratitude of him whom they
delighted to serve. The whole group is a delightful
instance of what a united family may achieve in
"bearincf one another's bm^dens," and how the
greatest of all bodily misfortimes nuiy with such
assistance become no obstacle in the pursuit even of
subjects which demand the fullest exertion of all our
faculties.*

As to Huber himself, we took up his book with
the not unreasonable prejudice of not liking to be
led by a " blind guide," and with the common
notion that all his discoveries had been proved the

* As there is a rose without a thorn, so is there a hee without a
stino-. Captam Basil Hall discovered these in the neighbourhood of
Tampico ; and it was one of the highest compliments, and at the same
time gratifications, that Huber ever received, when Professor Prevost
procured and sent to him a hive of this species in his old age.

huber's discoveries. 81

mere work of an imagination naturally rendered more
lively by being severed from the view of external
objects. We confess oiu^selves to liave been entirely
misled. Like every enthusiast who ventures to brave
the prejudices of satisfied mediocrity by the bold
statement of his discoveries, he met with a torrent
of ridicule and abuse, which he hardly lived to see
stemmed : but, as in the case of Abyssinian Bruce,
further research is daily proving liis greatest wonders
to be true. Though fancy must always tlirow some
little of her colouring over a subject such as this —
for all imputation of human motives to such creatures
must be merely fanciful — yet Huber's facts are now
admitted imchaUenged, To him we are indebted
for the knowledge that wax is produced from honey,
of the impregnation of the queen-bee, of the existence
of fertile workers, of artificial queens, of the use of
the antennje, of the senses and respiration of bees,
and of endless discoveries in their general economy
and management. Many, indeed most, of these
things had been suggested before, but Huber, by
his earnest zeal and captivating style, achieved for
bees what Scott has done for his nati\'e lochs and
mountains — he wrote them into notice and interest ;
— and he confirmed or refuted by actual experiment
the floating notions of his predecessors, so that,
though not positively the first originator of the doc-
trines that are generally referred to hhn, and though
succeeding ages will doubtless question and improve
upon his theories, Huber's name will ever remain in
bee-knowledo-e — what that of Bacon is in inductive

82 THE HONEY-BEE.

pliilosopliy — and Newton in science — and Watt in
steam. *

Dr. Bevan's may be considered the standard work
on our domestic bee. He has exhausted every source
of information on the subject, whether from old
writers or living authorities. We sometimes, perhaps,
wish that he had been less chary of his own obser-
vations, for he seems often to have allowed them to
give place to quotations from other authors. A
glance at his " table of contents " will show the
varied subjects into which his inquiries branch out,
and no where will the bee-master find more pleasing
or satisfactory information.

Bees have obtained little notice from the British
legislatiu:e. In France and other continental king-
doms remission of taxes has sometimes been made
in proportion to the number of hives kept by the
peasant. The English common-law on the subject

* We can never read any account of Huber without reflecting, with
regret, how much his lot would have been lightened, especially after
his Maria's death, had he lived to witness the blessed invention of
Boohs for the Blind. It was made in France shortly before the Revo-
lution • and down to a very recent period our Blind Asylums derived
their supplies from Paris, where several books of the English Bible
and the Prayer-Book were executed in raised letters with veiy fair
skill and effect. But in our cormtry, within the last two or three
vears, one of a rarely gifted brotherhood, Mr. Henry Frere, of Poets'
Corner Westminster, has discovered a new method of raising the im-
press, which almost rivals in merit the original invention. We have
before us part of the Scriptures done in this new style ; tlie page is
beautiful to look at ; and we know, through the experience of an
afflicted friend, how vastly more legible it is to a blind person's finger
than the best done in the old way — also how much more durable it
is. We trust this note may serve to fix the attention of benevolent
persons on this happy novelty, and so further the adoption of it, until
the whole Bible at least shall thus be made accessible to the private,
fhe solitary study of the blind.

BEE-LAW. 83

is also very indefinite. It is a vulgar error to sup-
pose that, if you keep up ringing^ and are in sight
of yom* bees, you may legally follow them into your
neighboiu''s gi'ounds, or that it is unlawful to keep
an empty hive in your garden. Good neighbour-
ship, however, should prove stronger in both these
cases than any defects or bonds of law. They almost
come under the enactments of the Cruelty to x4.nimals
Prevention Act, but not quite ; indeed, it would be
a very nice question for our courts, whether they
are domesticated animals oi ferce naturce.

The following story will perhaps settle the ques-
tion of Tithe bees without the aid of the Commis-
sioners. It is that of an ancient gentleman whose
parish priest insisted on having the tenth swarm.
After miich debate —

" ' It shall be done,' quoth the gentleman. It fortuned
within two dales the gentleman had a great swarme, the
which he put into a hive, and toward night carried them
home to the parson's house ; the parson, with his wife and
familie, he found at supper in a faire hall ; the gentleman
saluted them, and told the parson he had brought him some
bees. ' I, mary,' quoth the parson, ' this is neighbourly-
done ; I pray you cany them into my garden.' ' Xay, by
troth,' quoth the gentleman, ' I will leave them even here.'
AYith that he gave the hive a knock against the ground, and
all the bees fell out ; some stung the parson, some stung his
wife, and some his children and family ; and out they ran
as fast as they could shift into a chamber, and well was
he who could make shift for himself, leaving their meate
cold upon the table in the hall. The gentleman went
home carrying his emptie hive with him." — See Cottorij
p. 102.

g2

84 THE HONEY-BEE.

We must ]3ass by many cmious anecdotes of wild-
bee bunting, witb wbicb all modern bee-books
abomid, and tlie assistance wbicb tbe bee-cuckoo
and boney-ratel afford to one anotber, and to man.
A bunt in tbe prairies, bowever, described by
Wasbington Irving, is too good to be omitted.

" We had not been long in the camp, when a party set
out in quest of a bee-tree, and being curious to witness the
sport, I gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them.
The party was headed by a veteran bee-hunter, a tall lank
fellow in homespun garb, that hung loosely about his limbs,
and a straw hat, shaped not unlike a bee-hive ; a comrade,
equally uncouth in garb, and ^vithout a hat, straddled
along at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. To
these succeeded half a dozen others, some with axes, and
some with rifles ; for no one stirs from the camp without
fire-arms, so that he maybe ready either for wild deer or wild
Indian. After proceeding some distance, we came to an
open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader
halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top
of which I perceived a piece of honey-comb. This, I found,
was the bait or lure for the wild bees. Several were hum-
ming about it, and diving into its cells. AVhen they had
laden themselves with honey, they would rise up in the air,
and dart oft" in one straight line, almost with the velocity of
a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course they
took, and then set oft" in the same direction, stumbling along
over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned
up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden
bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak,
where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a
hole about sixty feet from the ground. Two of the bee-
hunters now phed their axes vigorously at the foot of the
tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and
amateurs, in the mean time, drew off to a cautious distance,

BEE-HUNTING. 85

to "be out of the way of tlie falling of the tree and the ven-
geance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the axe seemed
to have no effect in alarming or agitating this most indus-
trious community. They continued to ply at their usual
occupations — some arriving full-freighted into port, others
sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen
in a money-making metropolis, little suspicious of impending
bankruptcy and downfall ; even a loud crack, which an-
nounced the disrupture of the trunk, failed to divert their
attention from the intense pursuit of gain : at length down
came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open
from end to end, 'and displaying all the hoarded treasures of
the commonwealth. One of the hunters immediately ran
up with a wisp of lighted hay, as a defence against the bees.
The latter, however, made no attack, and sought no revenge ;
they seemed stupified by the catastrophe, and, unsuspicious
of its cause, remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins,
without offering us any molestation. Every one of the party
now fell to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the
flakes of honeycomb with which the hollow trunk was stored.
Some of them were of old date, and a deep brown colour ;
others were beautifully white, and the honey in their cells
was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were
placed in camp-kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment ;
those which had been shivered in the fall were devoured
upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with
a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and
disappearing as rapidly as a cream-tart before the holiday
appetite of a schoolboy. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone
that profited by the downfall of this industrious community.
As if the bees would carry through the similitude of their
habits with those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld
numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager wing, to enrich
themselves with the ruins of their neighbours. These busied
themselves a's eagerly and cheerily as so many wreckers on
an Indiaman that has been driven on shore — plunging into

86 THE HONEY-BEE.

the cells of the broken honeycombs, banqueting greedily on
the spoil, and then winging their way full-freighted to their
homes. As to the poor proj)rietors of the ruin, thej^ seemed
to have no heart to do anything, not even to taste the nectar
that flowed around them, but crawled backwards and for-
wards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow,
with his hands in his pockets, whistling vacantly and de-
spondingly about the ruins of his house that had been burned.
It is difiBcult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of
the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time
of the catastrophe, and who arrived, from time to time, with
full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in
the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its
head, astonished at finding all a vacuum. At length, as if
comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters
on a dry branch of a neighbouring tree, from whence
they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz
forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic.
It was a scene on which the '^melancholy Jaques ' might
have moralised by the hour." — Tour in Prairies^ ch. ix.

" The bee," says an old writer, " is but a year's
bird witli some advantage." Those " hatched," as
Evelyn would say, in May die before the end of the
following year. Dr. Be van, indeed, gives only an
average of six months to the worker, and four to the
drone. We think that he cuts the life of the worker
too short, as no doubt some last till the July of the
following year. If liis account were correct, the
sacrifice of their lives by stifling would not be so
great a loss as it would at first appear. But their
use the second year is not so much for gathering
honey as for tending and nursing the young. The
queen-bee, though she does not " live for ever," lias

DURATION OF SWARMS. 87

certainly been known to last to a third or even
fourth summer : one writer makes the remark on her
— which has often been applied to donkeys and post-
boys— that he never saw a dead one ; but others,
Messrs. Cotton and Ba^ster among- the number, have

O CD '

disproved the assertion that the Queen " never dies,"
by being fortunate — or unfortunate enough — to have
handled a royal carcase ; and, since we commenced
writing on this subject, one has kindly been for-
warded to us by the post. The dm-ation of a bee-
colony is of com'se a very different thing to the life
of an indi^-idual bee, though they seem, by the
ancients especially, often to have been confounded.
Columella assigns ten years as the utmost limit to a
hive : and thouD-h instances are brouo-ht forward of
a longer period, natmalists seem to be agreed that
this would be the ordinary termination of a hive
left to itself.* The immediate cause of its falling
away is that the bees, in everytliing else so neat and
cleanly, neglect to clear out the exuviae of the grub
— the silken cocoon that it spins and casts — from <
the brood-cells, till, the off-castings of successive
generations choking them up and rendering them
useless, the race at length degenerates and becomes
extinct. Hence the importance of the practice of
cutting away yearly, in those stocks which we wish
to preserve, some portions of the old comb, which

* Virgil considers the existence of a bee seven years —
" Xeque enim plus septima ducittu- sestas."
That of a hive endless —

" Nam genus immoi'tale manet,'' &c.

88 THE HONEY-BEE.

the bees will continually restore with fresh masonry
till, like the ship Argo, it retains its original form
without an inch of its original material. Cases,
however, are stated of the same colony lasting many
years. Delia Rocca speaks of hives in Syria con-
tinuing through forty or fifty summers ; and Butler
relates a story, of the year 1520, that

" When Ludovicus Vives was sent by Cardinal Wolsey to
Oxford, there to be Public Professor of Pvhetoric, being placed
in the College of Bees,* he was welcomed thither by a swarm
of bees ; which sweetest creatures, to signify the incompa-
rable sweetness of his eloquence, settled themselves over his
head, under the leads of his study, where they have continued
above 100 years ;"

and they ever went by the name of Vives' Bees.

*' In the year 1630 the leads over Vives' study, being de-
cayed, were taken up and new cast ; by which occasion the
stall was taken, and mth it an incredible mass of honey.
But the bees, as presaging their intended and imminent de-
struction (whereas they were never kno^vn to swarm before),
did that spring (to preserve their famous kind) send down a
fair swarm into the President's garden — the which in the
year 1633 yielded two swarms ; one whereof pitched in the
garden for the President ; the other they sent up as a new
coloDy into their old habitation, there to continue the memory
of this ' Mellifluous Doctor,' as the University styled him
in a letter to the Cardinal. How sweetly did all things
then concord, when in this neat fiovaaiov, newly consecrated
to the Muses, the Muses' sweetest favourite was thus ho-
noured by the Muses' birds ! "

* So called, says Butler, by the founder, in its statutes : Corpus
Christi Collecre is meant. There is a letter of Erasmus to John Clay-
mond, the first President, addressed J. C, Collegii Apmn Prsesidi.
We dare not ask whether the colony is yet extant.

DEATH OF THE DROXES. 89

Whatever may be tlie period wliicli natui'e or
man allots to the life of the queen and the worker,
there is one sad inhabitant of the hive who is seldom
allowed, even by his own species, to bring his dreary
autmnn to a natiu'al close. About the middle of
August, the awful " massacre of the innocents," the
killing of the drones, begins. " After which time,"
as Butler has it, " these Amazonian dames begin to
wax weary of their mates, and to like their room
better than their company. When there is no use
of them, there will be no room for them. For albeit,
generally among all creatures, the males as most
worthy do master the females, yet in these the
females have the pre-eminence, and by the gram-
marians' leave, the feminine gender is more worthy
than the masculine." There is something unavoid-
ably ludicrous in the distresses of these poor Jerry
Sneaks. Ha^-ing lived in a land of milk and honey
all the smnmer long, partaken of the best of every-
tliing, without even stirring a foot towards it, cod-
dled and coaxed, and so completely " spoilt," that
they are fit for nothing, who can see them " taken
by the hind legs and tlu-o^Ti down stairs " with a
heap of workers on the top of them — their vain
strugc^les to retm-n — then* sly attempts to creep in
stealthily — their disconsolate resignation at the last
— without thinking it a just retribution for the past
years of a pampered and unprofitable life ? And
yet there is mingled with this feehng a degree of
pity for these " melancholy Jaqueses " thrown aside
(we mix our characters as in a masquerade) by the

90 THE HONEY-BEE.

imperious and unrelenting Catherine of tlie hive.
"At first, not quite forgetting their old familiarity,
thej gently give them Tom Drum's entertainment :
they that will not take that for a warning, but pre-
sume to force in again among them, are more
shrewdly handled. You may sometimes see a liand-
ful or two before a hive wliich they had killed
within; but the greatest part fly away and die
abroad." We need not name the author we are
quoting, who, fearful lest womankind should take
this Dana'id character for their example, proceeds :
" But let not nimble-tongued sophisters gather a
false conclusion from these true premises, that they,
by the example of these, may arrogate to themselves
the like superiority : for ex imrticulari non est syl-
logizare ; and He that made these to command their
males, commanded womankind to be commanded.
But if they would fain have it so, let them first imi-
tate their singular virtues, their continual industry
gathering, their diligent watchfulness in keeping,
their temperance, chastity, cleanliness, and discreet
economy, &c. :" and so he sums up all womanly
virtues from this little type as if he believed in the
transmigi'ation of souls described by Shnonides — not
him of Cos — in liis Iambics. We give the trans-
lation as we find it in No. 209 of the ' Spectator :' —

" The tenth and last species of -women were made out of
a bee ; and happy is the man who gets such an one for his
wife. She is altogether faultless and unblameable. Her
family flourishes and improves by her good management.
She loves her husband and is beloved by him. She brings

A BEE-WIFE. 91

him a race of beautiful and virtuous children. She distin-
guishes herself among her sex. She is surrounded with
graces. She never sits among the loose tribe of women, nor
passes away her time with them in wanton discourses. She
is full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wife that Jupi-
ter can bestow on man."

^Yhat can vre do better tlian wish that all crood bee-
masters maj meet witli a bee-wife 1

We very mucli question the truth and utility of the
common "moralities" drawn fi'om the industry and
prudence of the bee. Storing and hoarding are rather
the ciu'se than the requhement of our ordinary nature ;
and few, except the very young and the very poor,
reqiure to have this sermon impressed upon them.
"We are rather inclined to believe that, had Almighty
AVisdom intended this to be the lesson drawn from
the consideration of the works of His creatines, we
should have been referred in His revealed word to
the housewifery of this insect " fowl of the air,"
rather than to the ravens "which have neither
storehouse nor barn."

Yet the thrifty bee is never once set before us as
a pattern in the Bible. The Wise King indeed,
who " spake of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
thincrs, and of fishes," has referred the sluo-crard and
the distrustful to the early hours, and the " working
while it is yet day," and the guideless seciuity of
the Ant : but we see nothinor in his words wliich
necessarily implies approbation of that anxious care-
fulness for the morrow, which we are elsewhere ex-
pressly told to shun, and which is but too often the
mask of real covetousness of heart. And we believe

92 THE HONEY-BEE.

this the more, because the Ant (to whom we are
sent), though it wisely provides for its daily bread,
does not lay up the winter store wherewith to fare
sumptuously every day.

We know that, in saying this, we are flying into
the uplifted eyes of careful mothers and bachelor
uncles, who time out of mind have quoted, as it has
been quoted to them, the busy bee as the sure ex-
emplar of worldly prudence and prosperity ; but we
think that we can show them a more excellent way
even for earthly honour, if they, as Christ's servants,
will content themselves with those types in the
natural world which He himself has given them,
and learn that quiet security, and trustful contented-
ness, and ready obedience, and active labour for the
present hour, wliich He has severally pointed out to
us in the lilies, the ravens, the sheep, and the
emmets, rather than seek elsewhere for an emblem
of that over-curious forecasting for the future, which,
whether in things spiritual or temporal, is plainly
discouraged in the word of God — those laws and
judgments of the Lord which are sweeter than the
honey and the honeyeomh, and in the keepiag of
which " there is great reward."

" Take that ; and He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, pi'ovidently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfoi't to my age!"

Not but that the bee aifords us a moral, though it
be not that which worldly wisdom commonly assigns
to it. We have in the first place a direct cause for
thankfulness in the delicate food with which it

BEE " MORALITIES." 93

supplies us. " The bee is little among sucli as fly;
but her fruit is the chief of sweet things " {Ecclus.
xi. 3) ; and the Almighty has, in many senses, and
in no connnon cases, supplied the houseless and the
wanderer with "wild honey" and "a piece of
honeycomb," and "honey out of the stony rock;"
and " a land flowmg with milk and honey " has
been from the first the type of another and a better
country. And the little honey-maker is itself indeed
one of the most wonderful proofs of the goodness
and power of God. That within so small a body
should be contained apparatus for converting the
" virtuous sweets " which it collects into one kind
of nourishment for itself — another for the common
brood — a third for the royal — glue for its carpentry —
wax for its cells — poison for its enemies — ^lioney for
its master — with a proboscis ahnost as long as the
body itself, microscopic in its several parts, tele-
scopic in its mode of action — with a sting so m-
finitely sharp, that, were it magnified by the same
glass which makes a needle's point seem a quarter
of an inch, it would yet itself be invisible, and this
too a hollow tube — that all these varied operations
and contrivances should be enclosed witliin half an
inch of length and two grains of matter, while in
the same " small room " the " large heart " of at
least thirty* distinct instincts is contained — is surely
enough to crush all thoughts of atheism and mate-
rialism, without calling in the aid of twelve heavy
volumes of Bridgewater Treatises.

* Kirby and Spence, Introd. to Ent., ii. 504.

94 THE HONEY-BEE.

But we must hasten to end this too long paper.
Its readers generally will be above that class to
whom profit, immediate or remote, from bee-keeping
can be of any serious moment — though indeed the
profit lies in saving the bees, not in killing them.
But many prejudices have to be done away, and
greater care bestowed, and a better knowledge of
their habits acquired, before the murdering system
can be eradicated from the poor. It is for the higher
classes to set the example by presents of cheap and
simple but better-constructed hives — by personal in-
terest taken in their bee-management — ^by supplying
them with the best- written books on the subject —
above all, by adopting the merciful system in their
own gardens, and intrusting theu' hives to the espe-
cial care of one of the under-gardeners, whose office
it should be, not only to diligently tend and watch
his master's stock, but also to instruct the neigh-
bouring cottagers in the most improved management.
It would be an excellent plan to attach a stall of
bees to the south wall of a gardener's cottage or
lodge, with a glass side towards the mterior, so that
the operations of the bees might be watched from
within. The custom of placing them within an
arched recess in the wall of the house was one of old
Eome, and is still observed in some countries. We
look upon this as a very pretty suggestion for a
fancy cottage in any style of architecture. Perhaps
the directors of our normal schools would find no
better way of teaching their pupil-schoolmasters how
to benefit and gam an influence among the parents

GENTLEMAN BEE-MASTER. 95

of the cliildren thej will liave to instruct, than to
put them in the proper way of making and managing
the new kinds of cottage-hives, of takmg honey,
joining stocks, and hjbernating the bees. We spoke
in a late article of Gardening^ beinsf a common orround
for the rich and poor. We would mark this dif-
ference with regard to bees, that we consider them
especially the " poor man's stock." No wealthy
man should keep large colonies of them for profit in
a neighbourhood where there are cottagers ready to
avail themselves of the advantage. A hive or two
in the garden — good old-fashioned straw-hives — for
the sake of their pleasing appearance and kindly
associations, and for the good of the flowers — is only
what every gentleman would delight to have ; or, if
he has time to devote to their history, an observatory-
hive for study and experiment ; but beyond this we
tliink he should not o-q — else he is certainlv robbino-
liis poorer neighbours. The gentleman-bee-master,
like the gentleman-farmer, should only keep stock
enough for encouragement and experiment, and leave
the practical and the profitable to the cottager and
the tenant. But the squire's hive and implements
should be of the best construction, for example's
sake ; and, keep he bees or beasts, he should be "a
merciful man" to them. And surely the feeling
mind will pause a little at the destruction of a Avhole
nation — the demolition of a whole city, with all its
buildings, streets, and thoroughflires, its palaces, its
Queen, and all ! What an earthquake to them must
be the moving of the hive ! What a tempest of fire

96 THE HONEY-BEE.

and brimstone must tlie deadly fmnes appear ! All
their instincts, their senses, their habits plead for
them to our humanity ; and, even if we allege their
sting against them, they may reply with scarcely an
alteration in the Jew's words — " Hath not a bee
eyes? hath not a bee organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by
the same winter and summer, as a Christian is ? If
you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you tickle us, do
we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and
if you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? If we are
like you in the rest, we ivill resemble you in that.''*

We said, if any man would keep bees, he must
make them his friends ; — nay, that is a cold word —
he must love them. De Gelien makes the remark, —

* The subjects of hybernating bees and of joining swanns are so
very impoilant in good bee-keeping, that, being connected with one
another, we must say a word, though a short one, upon them.
Though the opposite opinion has been stoutly maintained, it is now
generally admitted that a united stock does not consume so much
honey in tlie winter as the two swarms separately would have done.
But in order to save the consumption of honey at this time, the bees
must be kept as torpid as possible, and this is best done by placing
them in a cold, dark, but dry room. If you have not this conveni-
ence, move the doors from the north of your bee-house to the south,
so that the winter sun, being prevented from shining on the entrance
side, will not enliven and draw out the bees when the snow is on the
ground. This most fatal circumstance it is most essential to guard
against. However, the most general and the shortest rule is, send
your bees off to sleep in good condition in the autumn (i. e. supply
them with plenty of food then), for all hybernating animals are fat at
the beginning of their toi-jDidity, and it is fat people who fjill fastest
to sleep after dinner : keep them toi-pid, by even coolness and diyness,
as long as you can. No bee-master will ever be successful who does
not take pains of some sort to eftect these objects.

ITS MANY HONOURS. 97

which we have heard before of figs, and oHves, and
medlars, and truffles, or of an equivocal dish recom-
mended by a host, — that you must either like them
very much or not at all. " Beaueoup de gens aimerit
les abeiUes : je nai vu personne qui les aima me-
diocrement ; on se 2)<^8simine pour elles !" It was
this love, we suppose, that led Mahomet to make an
exception in their favour when all other flies were
condemned ; — that made Napoleon, who laughed at
the EngHsh as a nation of shopkeepers, select this
emblem of industry, in place of the idle lily,

'* That tasks not one laborious hour."

And Urban VIII. and Louis XII. adopted them as
the device on their coat of arms ; and Camdeo, the
Cupid of Budliism, strung his bow with bees ! The
Athenians ranked the introduction of the bee among
their great national blessings, tracing it up to Cecrops,
" the friend of man," — ^the Attic Alfred ; and such
regard is still paid to them in many parts of. the
south of England, that no death, or birth, or mar-
riage takes place in the family without its being
communicated to the bees, whose hive is covered in
the first case with a piece of black cloth, in the two
latter with red. The 10th of August is considered
their day of Jubilee, and those who are seen work-
ing on that day are called Quakers. Omens were
wont to be taken from their swarming ; and their
settling on the mouths of Plato and Pindar was taken
as a sure presage of the sweetness of their future
eloquence and poetry ; though these legends are

H

98 THE HONEY-BEE.

somewliat spoiled, by the same event being related of
the infancy both of Lucan and of St. Ambrose, called,
as was Vives afterwards, the Mellifluous Doctor.
We all know of Nestor's "honeyed" words, and
Xenophon, " cujus sermo est melle dulcior." Api-
arian Societies have been formed all over the world
for their study and cultivation, as the Franconian,
the Bavarian, the Lusatian, those of Vienna and
Norfolk, and the defunct one of Oxford. Bees have
not only dispersed a mob, but defeated an Amurath
with his Janissaries ;* but it would be quite im-
possible in a sketch like this to attempt to give any-
thing like a full account of their many honours and
achievements, and of the extraordinary instinct dis-
played by them in every operation of their manifold
works. Our object in these remarks has been rather
to stimulate the novice in this subject than to give
any complete history of their habits, or to put forth
any new discovery or system of our own. We have
introduced our little friends with our best grace, and
must leave them now to make the best of their way
with our readers.

*' So work the Honey Bees :
Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts :
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home ;

* The Abbe della Rocca relates that, '=when Amurath, the Turkish
emperor, during a certain siege, had battered down part of the wall,
and was about to take the town by assault, he found the breach de-
fended by bees, many hives of which the inhabitants had stationed on
the ruins. The Jani"ssaries, although the bravest soldierij in the Otto-
man empire, durst not encounter this formidable line of defence, and
refused to advance."

ITS HEBREW NAME. 99

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ;

Others, like soldiers, aimed in their stings.

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ;

Which pillage they with merry m.arch bring home

To the tent royal of their emperor :

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold ;

The civil citizens kneading up the honey ;

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy bui'dens at his narrow gate ;

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,

Deliveiing o'er to executors j ,le

The lazy yawning drone."

Henry V. a. 1, s. 2.

Who would not affirm, from this and other inci-
dental allusions, that Shakspeare had a hive of his
own ? Dr. Bowring has only been able to discover
in them " galleries of art and schools of industry,
and professors teaching eloquent lessons ;" perhaps
our friend means Mechanics' Institutes, and travel-
ling lectui'ers.

Pope makes the bee our schoolmaster in another
sense, and bids us, besides its monarchy,

" The arts of building from the Bee receive ;"

and Butler, in a list of proverbial attributes that re-
minds one of a string of epithets in our old ' Gradus,'
recommends liis readers to be as " profitable, labtv
rious, busy, loyal, swift, nimble, bold, cimning,
chaste, and neat," as a bee. Without running into
all tliis enthusiasm, or forcing her example beyond
what is written in the Bible, she may often, " though
she has neither speech nor language," appeal to
her masters in her Hebrew name, and be to us
" Deborah," — " she that speaketh."

LONDON :

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,

STAMFORD STREET.

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1^ DEC 84

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