VIII Bee Enemies
The toad is a lazy, ugly-looking enemy of the bee. His capabilities, however, are not equal to his will and wants. He squats under the bee landing-board, and seizes every too heavily laden or wing-weary labourer that accidentally drops. This is really very cruel. The bee that has finished the longest journey, and gone through the hardest work, and borne the heat and brunt of the hot, long summer day, takes a rest on a leaf just before entering the hive, or comes short of the door of his home by an inch, and is seized by the unclean monster and devoured. The only way of getting rid of this unfeeling destroyer, who sits “seeking whom he may devour,” is to pay a visit to your hives soon after sunrise and an hour before sunset; and on finding him on his wicked watch, seize him by the hind leg and throw him to as great a distance across your hedge as you well can. But if the “bee-master” be a lady—if I may use the phrase—let her empty on him a snuff-box full of strong snuff, and he will reflect a few days before he returns to his old quarters. I give this prescription to ladies, because they do not like to seize the cold-blooded creature and fling him to a respectable distance. How favoured our Irish bee-masters must be in this matter!—they have no toads. I also wish they had no riots. But troubles must come in some shape. Still, I would rather have toads than Belfast navvies and ship-carpenters, and any day I would prefer being The Times Bee-master to be Mayor of Belfast.
We are also exempt in this island of ours from the bear, unless one should break loose from the strolling menageries that occasionally infest Tunbridge Wells Common. “The bear,” remarks a Yankee, “is the knowingest varmint for finding out a bee-tree in 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.”
The moth is a dangerous enemy. During the day there is no risk of his attacks. But during the night he is, like other thieves and burglars, alive and active. “He loves the darkness rather than the light, because his deeds are evil.” As no bee-master can do without sleep, I cannot expect of the most enthusiastic and devoted that he will watch his hives the whole night. The only preventive measure of a mechanical sort I can recommend is that of lessening the entrance door. For this purpose he must apply a zinc slide, such as Mr. Neighbour, in Holborn, will supply, which will keep out the moth and yet let out the bees. Besides, the narrower the door, the more closed up the rank of the bee-sentinels becomes, and the more able they are to repel the death’s-head moth, or any similar intruder. But the most vigorous prophylactic measure you can take is to keep your bees in full strength; and as the time selected by these depredators is the early autumn, you cannot do better than give your bees a cup of good strong ale, boiled up with sugar, which will cheer up your whole family, and enable them to put forth their whole strength in grappling with their enemies. Don’t mind teetotal objections. These are all very good for drunkards; but for sober, industrious bees, determined to defend their property, a cup of good ale is as kind as it is useful. The Acherontia Atropos, or death’s-head hawk-moth, not only robs the hive of its honey, but frightens and all but paralyses the bees. Huber gives an account of the exertions of his bees to guard against this formidable foe. It is here quoted from Lardner:—
“When he found his hives attacked and their store of honey pillaged by these depredators, he contracted the opening left for the exit and entrance of the bees to such an extent as, while it allowed them free ingress and egress, it was so small that their plunderers could not pass through it. This was found to be perfectly effectual, and all pillage was thenceforward discontinued in the hives thus protected.
“But it happened that in some of the hives this precaution was not adopted, and here the most wonderful proceeding on the part of the bees took place. Human contrivance was brought into immediate juxtaposition with apiarian ingenuity.
“The bees of the undefended hives raised a wall across the gate of their city, consisting of a stiff cement made of wax and propolis mixed in a certain proportion. This wall, sometimes carried directly across and sometimes a little behind the door, first completely closed up the entrance; but they pierced in it some openings just large enough to allow two bees to pass each other in their exits and entrances.
“The little engineers did not follow one invariable plan in these defensive works, but modified them according to circumstances. In some cases a single wall, having small wickets worked through it at certain points, was constructed. In others several walls were erected one within the other, placed parallel to each other, with trenches between them wide enough to allow two bees to pass each other. In each of these parallel walls several openings or wickets were pierced, but so placed as not to correspond in position, so that in entering a bee would have to follow a zigzag course in passing from wicket to wicket. In some cases these walls or curtains were wrought into a series of arcades, but so that the intervening columns of one corresponded to the arcades of the other.
“The bees never constructed these works of defence without urgent necessity. Thus, in seasons or in localities where the death’s-head moth did not prevail, no such expedients were resorted to. Nor were they used against enemies which were open to attack by their sting. The bee, therefore, understands not merely the art of offensive war, and can play the part of the common soldier, but is also a consummate military engineer; and it is not against the death’s-head moth alone that it shows itself capable of erecting such defences.”
A correspondent of The Times, writing on naval guns, who signs himself “Z,” alluded to my letters, and drew a happy illustration from them. Let me here inform the Admiralty of a new arm which in extremity—for otherwise it would be the sacrifice of too many bee combatants—may be used in naval warfare. But perhaps Lord Clarence Paget may find some difficulty in securing its adoption. It is related in “The Naturalist’s Library:”—
“A small privateer with forty or fifty men, having on board some hives made of earthenware full of bees, was pursued by a Turkish galley manned by five hundred seamen and soldiers. As soon as the latter came alongside, the crew of the privateer mounted the rigging with their hives, and hurled them down 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.”
But as many of my recent correspondents in The Times were clergymen, I can recommend to the ministers of Belfast an admirable prescription for the extreme case of a Belfast mob sacking their rectories and manses. The Mayor of Belfast also might take it into his grave consideration, should the citizens, instead of trying to convert each other by arguments or Scripture, have recourse to those fashionable weapons which they lately wielded with so much effect:—
“During the confusion occasioned by a time of war in 1525, a mob of peasants assembling in Hohnstein, in Thuringia, attempted to pillage the house of the parish minister, 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 effect was what might be expected; they were immediately put to flight, and happy to escape unstung.”
Is not this worthy of the consideration of every peaceful vicar in Belfast?
The spider is also a very mischievous pest in bee-houses. He builds his web in nooks and corners, under the eaves and about the landing-boards, and in the track of the outgoing and incoming bees. When a bee is inveigled, its efforts to extricate its captive limbs serve only to involve it in the toils more hopelessly. I have seen half-a-dozen working-bees thus caught and scooped out by the ravenous jaws of the spider. These webs are constructed so rapidly, that nothing short of daily attention will get rid of them. The best thing is, to have the bee-house as smooth inside as it can be made, with as few projecting edges and points as possible; and in the next place, the daily use of a hard, dry painter’s brush will sweep them away as fast as they are made, and probably their weavers with them.
Finally, the worst enemy of bees is man. There is the barbarous, cruel, and ungrateful treatment of the brimstone match. The little innocents have toiled all the summer. They have thrown off a swarm—after the example of the Church of Scotland, which, by way of showing its internal strength, threw off a capital swarm in 1843—they have recovered all the effects of their secession, and amassed abundance for future days. The bee-cide felon, called man, digs a pit, lights four ounces of brimstone inside of it, and deliberately sets fifteen thousand bees, queen and all, above its really and truly infernal fumes—suffocates and burns the unhappy martyrs, and then subscribes to various charities in winter, and calls himself a philanthropist! He ought to be sent to the treadmill. Why does the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals take up the case of cab-horses, and overlook the murdered bees? But there are regular inquisitors who do not use sulphur. Those scientific crinkum-crankum hives, from which bees with difficulty get out, and with more difficulty get in, are little purgatories, over which the inquisitors preside. Vivisection is no worse. Yet these men complain that all who advocate simple, easily accessible, and comfortable homes for bees are behind the age, and ignorant of apiarian progress! There are not more than three sorts of hives that are humane. All the others bewilder the brains, weary the legs, and spoil the tempers of the best bees that ever dwelt in a hive. I have no objection whatever to ornamental bee-sheds; but the hives which are the dwelling-places of my bees should be as plain as possible, comfortable, warm, and easy of exit and entrance. A very gifted preacher said it took all his learning to make his sermons plain: it ought to take all a bee-master’s to make his hives simple. When I hear a fine preacher expressing himself in grand words and glittering figures, I always feel—I hope not uncharitably—that he cares more about displaying himself than serving his Master or feeding his flock. Even so I am tempted to think of the ingenious inventors of intricate labyrinths they intend for hives,—that their own fame as apiarians is their chief thought, and the comfort of their bees their last and least consideration. A careless, inattentive bee-master is criminal. He ought to see that his bees have a sufficiency of food at the close of the year. In fine October weather he may place several soup-plates filled with ale and sugar well boiled together, and covered with perforated wooden floats, which sink as the bees sip the contents, opposite his hives. I never find any quarrel ensue, though I have seen thousands of bees from different hives feed together for hours. After October till March no liquid food should be offered; but a stick of barley-sugar may be thrust in now and then. The bees will not descend to taste it in too cold weather, and during a warm day they will enjoy such a dessert. In case of damp within the hive, which, when a glass is retained, may be seen inside of it, select a warm day, remove the glass, and close the aperture in the hive. Wipe the interior of the glass with a linen cloth till perfectly dry, and replace it as before. But a little artificial ventilation on a dry, warm day is still better.
Do not let your bees find by painful experience that their bee-master is their worst enemy.
For an account of wasps, see my letter to The Times, page 157.
The Bee-Master’s Letters to “The Times”
So many and so urgent have been the requests of my correspondents to reprint these letters, that I have carefully gone over them, corrected clerical errors, and reproduced them. They may amuse as well as teach. I append them in the order of their appearance. They were unfortunate enough to provoke the wrath of two or three hive-inventors or patentees, the merits of whose crooked and uncomfortable productions the writer could not appreciate; but they have received the warmest eulogies of great numbers to whom they conveyed new and interesting information.
It is a pity that petty jealousies should distill their poison on so pleasant a theme, and that bees should in this case turn wasps.
A very curious coincidence occurred in the course of the correspondence on bees which appeared in The Times. A succession of letters appeared in various more or less obscure newspapers, beginning at Exeter and moving northward to the Orkneys, each, mutatis mutandis, the repetition of the first. They invariably began by a laborious attempt to prove that the writer knows nothing of apiculture or prophecy, but in no one instance disproving a single position or showing the author’s ignorance of apiculture, but in more than one instance deploring the writer’s oversight of this or that hive. Every one of these writers—plainly under the inspiration of one—assumes that because the writer did not allude to his mode of treatment, he was ignorant of bee-management. The Bee-master had no idea there was such concert among bee-keepers, or that, in giving an account of his intercourse with his bees, he was putting his hands into hornets’ nests. But wasps have been a terrible plague this autumn.
One writer in a Scotch paper, who gives bees no credit for any ordinary virtue, and regards them purely as mechanical toys, writes thus:—
“This Bee-master says that ‘the bee leaves her house, traverses a mile or two distant, and returns to her home—one amid twenty contiguous ones—with unerring certainty.’ This was the general opinion up till lately—that the bee always returned to its own hive—in fact, there was no means of proving the contrary until the introduction of the Ligurian variety of bee. For the information of ‘A Bee-master,’ I must tell him that they do not at all times go back to their own home, but make a mistake and enter their neighbour’s. This fact I soon ascertained after I got the Ligurians, as in a short time I saw them going into all my other common hives, more or less, and a neighbour nearly a mile away from this found the Ligurians had joined one of his swarms when in the act of swarming. These are facts which cannot be controverted, and prove that ‘A Bee-master’ ought to make himself master of his subject before he attempts to teach others. Queens, too, are frequently killed by entering into other hives when placed near each other, through their mistaking the one for the other; but these facts were not known to the generality of bee-keepers until they used the bar hives, when all the economy of the interior could be examined at pleasure.”
This foolish logician introduces foreigners to an English hive. They do not act like English bees—in short, they are not acquainted with a country in which they are not acclimatised; and from the blunders of the Ligurian foreigners he infers the ignorance of the British bee. This is a specimen of the rubbish printed from Devon to Haddington.
Another position of this Scotchman with a bee in his bonnet is as follows:—
“In removing a super—that is, a top or bonnet—he says they should be taken one hundred yards away from the hive, and the bees will fly back to the hive in about an hour. This I think a very bad plan. In the first place, if taken off in a fine day the bees would not leave it in an hour, and if there were any bees near, they would find it out in that time, their scent or sense of smell being so strong, and he would never get them away; and, besides, he would be very apt to take the queen away also, she being often found in the top, and she might not be able to fly back. It is certainly a bad plan in this part of the country, especially when the weather is cold in the autumn. When removing the heather honey, blow a few puffs of smoke from a burning rag into a super, and take it off, turning it upside down, putting on it another empty super of the same size, with cloth wrapped round where they meet, to keep out light. Next give the super containing the honey and the bees a few taps with a piece of stick at intervals. The bees, when filled with honey, which they will do as soon as disturbed, will ascend into the empty super, and if the queen should be there she will lead them at once, and they can all be put back into the hive. Any top can be emptied of bees in fifteen minutes by doing it in this way, and without running risk of losing the queen.”
Now, in ninety-nine cases in a hundred the queen is not in the super, and an intelligent bee-master can take care she is not there before he removes the super; and, in the next place, The Times Bee-master expressly stated his entire aversion to smoking bees for such a purpose; and earlier than August there is no risk of corsair bees. Besides, preference of one plan to another is not necessarily proof of ignorance.
This mere copyist of Devon remarks:—
“What can be the necessity for subjecting sugar to the temperature of 300 degrees, and rendering it so hard that weak hives are not able to take as much as keep them alive, when the same amount of sugar made to the consistency of their natural food would enable them to live? Common sense would indicate to anyone that in artificial feeding the nearer we approach their natural food the better; but it may be that it is hard honey which this wiseacre’s bees gather for him, and that the flowers in Kent give different food than those in Scotland! Let anyone observe the time a bee takes to fill itself on barley-sugar and the time from sugar Syrup, and the labour spent on the former to that of the latter, and he will soon see the difference between the two. And the only reason the writer gave, in answer to a correspondent, for giving the barley-sugar is, ‘that the other clogged the feet and smeared the wings of the bees.’ Now, everyone must be aware that a few straws in the dish prevents this. Again, he says that ‘the only vice among bees is their passionate liking for rum and strong ale; but the tee-totallers would fairly reply that they never care about either unless it is pressed upon them.’ And I say they would reply truly, for I maintain that the bees will not touch either rum or ale unless they are saturated with sugar or honey. But why be at the expense of the one or the other, when they will take it made with pure water before either?”
He must be in the habit of bolting his oatmeal pottage, or he never would have inferred that sipping its food in ten minutes is more conducive to the health and digestion of the bee than sipping it in half an hour. His remarks on ale and rum are merely a translation of the nonsense spoken by his original. But, in common with his co-partners in criticism, he thinks the Bee-master’s sole design in writing the letters in The Times was to puff his forthcoming work on bees. This mean and contemptible charge is best met by the simple and truthful answer, that the Bee-master had no more idea of writing a book on bees than of describing Mount Radnor or Yester Gardens. His purpose to do so arose from the urgent request of literally hundreds of correspondents.
On my suggestion as to the purpose and object of two thousand drones or male bees being produced, when there is only one perfect female—the queen—the writer observes:—
“In one of his letters in answer to correspondents, ‘Why there are so many drones in a hive, and only one princess?’ he confesses it a hard problem. But one part seems to him very clear—‘When the queen’s countless eggs come to be hatched, the temperature of the hive must be raised to 85° or 95°. The fat, round, and lazy drones are really the fuel. They accordingly give out great heat.’ Had the writer really known anything about bees, he could never have made such a statement. If the drones are the fuel to keep up the heat, why is it that they are never found in the hives till May or June—in this part of the country, at least—after thousands of bees have been hatched? If they were the fuel, surely one would expect them to be the first eggs which were laid by the queen, according to his theory; but a queen will begin laying workers’ eggs in January, and yet lay no drone eggs till May, just when the warm weather commences. Now, if they were required for heat, naturally Ave would expect them to be found before May, and they commence killing them in August, when the cold weather begins.”
Now, the fact is, it is in May and June that drones are wanted to keep up the heat. Half the bees are out at work, the means of maintaining the temperature are therefore diminished. The drones remain at home, unless during the noonday heat, when they take an airing, and can best be spared.
My first letter to The Times was a report of the prospects of the honey harvest, as follows:—
I have ten stock-hives. I never destroy or kill my bees. I look on the system of the sulphur match as barbarous and unprofitable. I leave each family on an average not less than twenty-five pounds of honey for their winter stores, and the surplus only I take away. Should any hive swarm, which I can generally prevent, and the remaining stock be therefore deficient in provision for the winter, I feed them in the course of the early spring with barley-sugar. This and other little attentions endear the bee-master to his bees, as they are very susceptible of gratitude and have long memories.
A hive is very like a church: when, in May, it increases rapidly in numbers and the temperature rises inside, you either increase their accommodation in area or in height, or you will have a secession. Should a secession take place, bees set an example ecclesiastics might copy. The new church never falls out with the old one. Side by side they work in perfect harmony, believing there is plenty of food for both. The only incidental mischief-maker is the wasp; whether he be prelate or presbyter I cannot say, but I know well he is a thief and intruder, and after a fight, the bees, who in this matter are rigid non-intrusionists, eject, maim, or kill him—and he deserves it. Queen Victoria’s Court is modelled on the apiarian queen’s. You may see the queen-bee, by means of my glass windows, going her rounds and giving orders, with her royal ladies, who never turn their backs on her majesty. The exceptional instance occurred on one occasion when it became necessary to give a rather sickly establishment rum and sugar, of which they drank to excess and got drunk. As long as the stimulus lasted, the monarchy became a fierce democracy, and queen and subjects were confounded in the mélée.
The only vice among bees is their passionate liking for rum and strong ale. But the teetotaller would fairly reply, that they never care about either unless it is pressed upon them.
My bees at present have begun the massacre of the drones. These are a sort of Benedictine monks, who, like Brother Ignatius, prefer enjoyment to hard work. They are round, fat, and lazy, making much noise, and eating of stores to which they do not contribute.... But you want to hear about the harvest?
In one square box there are forty pounds of honey, and in a corresponding super rapidly filling up, there is likely to be for me as much more.
In three Scotch or Ayrshire octagonal hives, which I have found to answer best of any, the three supers are in two almost full; and in one there is at least forty pounds weight in the super, and over the super is a bell-glass with seven or eight pounds additional.
In one of Neighbours’ very beautiful straw hives I have two bell-glasses almost full, and a month ago I removed from this hive a very beautiful glass of honey.
In one of Pettitt’s lateral hives, the bees passed through the subterranean archway a month ago, and have nearly filled this compartment. On this, also, I have placed a super bell-glass, which is beautifully stored.
From a common cottage straw hive I removed a bell-glass super three weeks ago weighing eighteen pounds.
This season I shall have nearly two hundred pounds weight of surplus honey, and yet leave in each hive more than enough to last the producers till April, 1865. Why should not cottagers cultivate bees? There is nothing to pay for pasture, very little labour is required, and that labour amusing, in taking care of them, and for very early virgin honey there may be had one shilling and sixpence or two shillings and sixpence a pound. The poor cottager might thus easily pay his rent. If landlords could only convince them that the old system of burning the bees in order to get the stock honey—which is at best inferior—is not only cruel but unprofitable, they would do an essential service. The poor peasant would have an interesting amusement after his day’s work, and a contribution towards his rent on the year’s end.
Bees and Bee-hives.
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir,—Since my letter appeared in your columns on “the Honey Harvest,” I have received from yourself various communications from rectors, vicars, curates, &c., who feel a very great interest in bee-keeping as a social and commercial question. I have also received letters addressed to me as “The Times Bee-master,” which the postman, guided by some remarkable instinct, has placed in my hands. Most of these letters invite confidential and personal communication on this subject, and record a variety of questions, difficulties, and perplexities which have injured or arrested the apiarian enterprises of the writers. I prefer to answer some of their inquiries through your columns, believing that the interest and importance of all that tends to benefit the cottager will ever find a place or a defence in The Times. The most urgent questions in the letters of my correspondents refer to the hives I employ, and which I briefly described in my letter. The first I mentioned is the Scotch or Ayrshire octagonal hive. It is made of thoroughly seasoned deal, in the form of a hexagon, about eight inches in height, and sixteen inches diameter. On the top is a series of parallel slits, extending from front to back, which I open or shut by a series of corresponding deal slides. On receiving a swarm in April or May, I introduce the slides, and thereby close up the top of the box. On finding—as in fine weather I am sure to find in three or four weeks—that the box is full, I place on the top another hexagonal box, in all respects the same in size and shape, and draw out the slides, and thereby introduce the bees to the vacant upper chamber. As each box has a window, I am thus able to ascertain progress. When this upper box is filled with honey, I may place on the top of it another precisely the same, drawing out the slides on the top of the second box, and introducing the bees to a third story But usually I prefer, for the sake of the beauty of it, a bell-glass, greater or less as the season may suggest. I have found this hive by far the most successful. It seems the bees, who construct their cells in the form of hexagons, prefer the house in which they work to be very much of the same shape. A cottager may very easily make these boxes in the long winter evenings. The second kind of hive I alluded to is made of straw, and may be purchased at Neighbours’, in Holborn. The greatest disadvantage is its expense, costing, as it does, thirty shillings. But it is so well made that it will last very long. I have had one in constant use during ten years, and it is still as good as when it was bought. Its top is flat, with three longitudinal apertures, closed till full with zinc slides. About the end of May, in a good year, I draw out the slides, after placing over each a good-sized bell-glass; and in July I have often had in each glass seven or eight pounds of honey. The reason of the failure of this hive is the coldness of the glass, which Neighbours’ additional super straw hive or cover does not mend. But if my correspondents will get a piece of thick Scotch plaid made like a nightcap, and case each glass with this, they will find the bees use it as readily as a wood or straw hive, and there will be no moisture from condensation of the bees’ breath inside.
The third sort of hive is Pettitt’s, of Snargate, Dover. It is worked on the lateral system, and of its kind is a perfect gem. Two boxes are placed on one floor, with a subterranean communication between them. On stocking the box on the right, a zinc slide is introduced, which shuts off the communication. As soon as the box is full, the slide is withdrawn and the communication laid open. The bees take possession of the other box on the left, and fill it with pure honey. When my harvest comes, I shut off the communication, and remove the left-hand box full of honey. You will perceive that my principle of action proceeds on the notion that the bottom box of the Ayrshire or Scotch hive, the straw box of Neighbours’, and the right-hand box of Pettitt’s, are each the sacred property of my bees, which I feel it larceny to lessen or disturb, and that the surplus is the tithe or portion of the bee-master. The ruinous blunder of country bee-keepers is their taking honey from the former—honey, too, mixed with brood and bees’ bread and the films of the young grubs. In this, the department I never touch, the queen presides with her ladies-in-waiting; and in any one of these, if the bees have filled the additional supers or laterals, there is abundance for all her subjects during the winter.
In some of the letters you have been good enough to send me, the expense of these hives is urged as a fatal objection as far as the cottager is concerned. Let me therefore explain my last and cheapest plan—not best, but cheapest.
Place the swarm in a common shilling straw hive. When you ascertain, either by its weight or the busy working of the bees, that it is full, take a square board, about a foot square; cut in the centre of it a round hole three or four inches in diameter; place on it a bell-glass, or what is cheaper, a smaller straw hive. Take a sharp table-knife, and go to the hive about twelve o’clock at noon, when most of the bees are out working; cut out the top of the straw hive, making a round aperture of four or five inches in diameter, and place on it the board with the bell-glass, or lesser straw super, covering the glass with its nightcap, and you have everything you can desire. If, in cutting the hole on the top of the stock hive, you hesitate or lose your self-possession, the watcher bees will attack you. Decision invariably paralyses them for the moment, and secures your safety. These glasses or supers are removed by cutting through between the board and the lower edge of the super with a zinc plate, on which you carry off the super full of surplus honey, placing over the hole at the top of the stock a flat board or an empty super. From one straw hive treated in this way I carried off eighteen pounds of honey at the beginning of July this year. I ought to add, that I keep my hives of every sort under cover of wooden sheds, accessible from behind by means of doors that let down. During the winter, I cover up the hives in the sheds each with paper, and thereby I keep them warm. As the spring approaches, I give the lightest an occasional half-pound of barley-sugar. This barley-sugar I get at Kilner’s, in Hanway-street, Oxford-street, before it is mixed with scent or lemon-acid. Common sugar is of no use. To be available to the bee, to suit a lambent insect, it must have been exposed to a heat of 300° Fahrenheit, in order to reduce crystallisable to uncrystallisable sugar. As I am answering your and my correspondents, I had better add a few useful hints.
Get acquainted with your bees; they are naturally very affectionate. I have frequently hived swarms, filling each hand with clusters of bees, and rarely have I received a sting. I have sat in the midst of them for hours, and weary bees have rested on me, and have entered their homes singing a song of thanks.
They have several bitter enemies besides the wasp. I used to see toads frequently sitting under the landing-board, and only recently discovered they were there “seeking whom they could devour.” On one of these ugly visitors being laid open, his maw was found filled with bees which he had sucked into his ugly jaws. The tom-tit, also, is a dangerous little enemy. He perches on the landing-place of the bees on a wet day, taps with his bill, apparently inquiring after the health of the inmates; a watcher bee comes out to reconnoitre, and is instantly snapped up by the wicked hypocrite. The spider, also, catches weary bees in his web; but the occasional use of a brush disposes of this peril. The snail, attracted by the warmth, occasionally creeps in. The bees successively attack him, but find their stings blunted and broken by the shell, as shot is by our iron-sides. Failing to injure or remove the intruder, they have recourse to a plan which indicates more than instinct They cover him up with propolis, a kind of gum which they use for stopping up crevices; and not only does he die from want of air, but he is prevented from giving forth offensive odour by the air-tight case or shroud.
The most attentive bee-master occasionally gets stung. I have discovered a cure not found in the pharmacopœia. Press a watch-key hard on the place after removing the sting—-this prevents the poison from spreading; then apply moist snuff or tobacco, rubbing it well in, and in five minutes all pain is gone. This is a never-failing remedy.
I have entered into these details, because from the correspondence you have sent me, and from letters that have reached me, it is evident that a great interest has been excited by my communication, and because it is of great social importance. Many a poor curate and ill-paid vicar, and many a cottager with time to spare and his rent to pay, may thus add to their income. My bees feed over an area of six miles, improving every flower they touch, and robbing nobody. Tunbridge Wells is one of the best bee-districts in England, and this alone is evidence of its being a healthy district. Bees never get on in unhealthy places.
Apologising for this long communication, I am, &c.,
A Bee-master.
Tunbridge Wells, July 27.
Bees and Bee-hives
To the Editor of “The Times!”
Sir,—The letters that reach me addressed to “The Times Bee-master” are legion. I can now form some idea of the weight of the load that must press on your shoulders every day; but I confess I had no notion of the extent of the interest that these letters prove to exist in apiarian culture. I select such difficulties from the letters before me as I have not disposed of, and these I would endeavour to overcome.
A very often repeated question is—What is the best way of hiving bees or securing a swarm? Let me at once state that the old and inveterate habit in Kent of beating a kettle, striking the tongs with the poker, and raising similar discordant sounds, is utterly absurd. They do not affect the bees. In swarming, the old queen abdicates and heads the swarm, and a young queen mounts the throne in the hive. The outgoing queen, followed by five thousand or six thousand bees, either ex proprio motu, or guided by pioneer scouts, selects a rose-bush, or a cozy opening in a laurel-hedge, and all her subjects hang on, forming a cluster of bees as large as the largest bunch of grapes. As soon as they have nearly all settled, take your empty hive or bee-box, which must be thoroughly dean, as bees hate dirt and slovenliness; turn the hive or box bottom upwards, hold it in your left hand under the cluster of bees, lay hold of the branch on which the bees hang with your right hand, and shake down the swarm into your empty hive. Place the hive bottom downward on a bee-board laid on the grass close by, raise up the edge by inserting a wedge or stone about two inches in size, and cover the top of the hive with a cloth or a few branches to keep off the sun heat. If the queen is inside, which is usually the case, the bees will steadily enter and remain. If by your awkwardness you have left her in the hedge with her ladies-in-waiting, the bees will return to the hedge, and you will have all to begin anew. As soon as they are comfortably housed, carry the hive to the shed under which it is to stand, and do not look at it or touch it for three days.
You need not be afraid of stings unless you rudely and violently meddle with the queen. If you thus interfere with her, the watcher bees will sound the alarm, and a thousand stings, like swords, will be unsheathed; but, otherwise, they are so absorbed with her majesty that they do not fly at a prudent and fearless bee-master.
A very important inquiry, repeated in several letters, is, on removing the super, whether of glass or straw, how are the bees to be expelled, that the honey alone may thus be secured?
All the plans of tapping, beating, and smoking are bad. Tobacco-smoke, and smokers generally, bees have a mortal hatred to. Bees have other personal antipathies, but the horrid scent of a tobacco-pipe in a visitor’s pocket either induces them disdainfully to shun all acquaintance, or provokes them to make an attack.
Your best way of removing a super full of honey, with bees, of course, in the spaces not full of comb, is to carry it about one hundred yards away from the hive. Wedge up the glass on one side from the zinc plate on which you have carried it, and the bees will leave in the course of an hour or two, and fly home. They very soon discover their separation from their queen, and under this feeling they lose all courage, and give up defending the very property they would have died fighting for when connected with the parent hive. The exceptional case is where there may be, what is very rare in a super, a portion of young brood—always in such cases drone-brood. This they refuse to desert. They do not attack, but, as if placed sentries by their queen, they insist on continuing at their post. The only course in such a case is to cut out the brood cells and put them away, as they are not likely to be wanted, and the bees will then return to the stock hive, report, I suppose, and receive future orders. In removing a super in August, when the bee ceases to accumulate in Kent, you must take care not to do so on the windward side of your hives, as the scent of honey will bring your visitors from every hive, who will rob you of all.
If in this month you find it difficult to escape the robbers, carry your super into your cottage, near a window, and expose one side of the super to the window—the side having egress for the bees. Very soon great numbers will fly to the window-panes, and by opening it for a few minutes they will rush out, and robber bees will have no time to enter.
I have been asked—Who and what is the queen, and who are those lazy abbots I referred to as drones? The queen is nearly twice the length of the common bee, of elegant proportions and shape. On seeing her, you would at once pronounce her a duchess or a queen. But it is a singular fact, and well worthy the consideration of sanitary students, that she rises originally from the ranks, and that treatment makes all the difference. The egg deposited seems the same as that of the ordinary bee, but we find it always laid in a cell three times the size of common cells. As soon as the young queen comes from the egg, numbers of nurse bees wait on her; she receives finer and more delicate food, more air, a warmer, larger, and nicer house, and apparently she is the creation of circumstances. She is the only female bee. The working-bees are neuters, really imperfectly developed females; the queen’s husband is a drone. With queenly prerogative and dignity she selects her consort, and off they fly on a wedding-trip, and spend the honeymoon amid sunshine and flowers. But it is asked—Why are there so many drones in a hive, if there is only one wife? This is a very hard problem. But one part of it seems to me very clear. When the Queen’s countless eggs come to be hatched, the temperature of the hive must be raised to 85° or 90° Fahrenheit. The bees must go out of doors to work. The fat, round, and lazy drones are really the fuel. They accordingly give out heat when most wanted. Mr. Cotton holds this view also. This year I had two stock-hives during breeding that stood, from 10 to 4 o’clock, at 95° Fahrenheit. We thus learn that fat old gentlemen are of use, and that Mr. Banting’s system is not always wise or expedient. There are in a good hive three or four royal cells; consequently, three or four queens will turn up. What follows? If the heat be great and additional room withheld, the old queen will abdicate and head a secession—in apiarian language, a swarm—and the next senior queen will ascend the throne. If there be still no increase of room allowed, she, too, will secede and head a second secession—in apiarian phrase, a caste—usually feeble, requiring when hived to be fed, and rarely a desirable issue. But when increased space is given, and a drawing-room is added to the dining-room, and boudoirs to the nursery, I am asked what follows. Do the princesses live together in harmony? My answer, from very careful observation, reveals a sad fact—a fact I cannot suppose to have been instituted in Paradise. If two queens turn up in a hive with plenty of space, but related space, they fight it out till one alone lives. So settled is this law, that the bees hound on the more timid and cowardly of the two queens, and insist on victory with supremacy or death. This is to me a very melancholy trait in a favourite study; but I suppose some higher law requires it.
It has been urged as a commercial question that honey is not now of the same importance as it was before the sugar-cane was discovered, and that gas has superseded wax candles. I am satisfied from many considerations, that if people would eat honey at breakfast instead of rancid London butter and nasty greasy bacon, not only would their health be better, but their temper would be sweeter. I find invariably that people who like honey are persons of genial and affectionate temper. If Mr. Cobden and Mr. Roebuck had only taken honey at breakfast, or a very choice fragment of virgin honey at dessert, they would never have given utterance to those vinegar and acetic-acid speeches which did them no credit. I wish somebody would send Mr. Spurgeon a super of good honey. Three months’ diet on this celestial food would induce him to give up those shockingly bitter and unchristian tirades he has been lately making against the clergy of the Church of England. The producers of honey never draw their stings unless in defence of their homesteads, and the eaters and admirers of honey rarely indulge in acrimonious language. I believe a great deal of bad feeling is not moral or mental, but physical, in its origin. If you have in a congregation, or in a school, or in a convocation, some one who sets everybody by the ears, treat him to a little honey at breakfast for six months, and the “thorn will blossom as the rose.” People that can’t eat honey—“hunc tu caveto”—they can’t ever fit “a land overflowing with milk and honey.”
I have not answered half the letters I have received; but because you have been so good as to take an interest in this very interesting subject, I intend to send you, as an expression of my thanks, a small glass super of honey filled from heath during July. If you do not eat honey, which I hope and, indeed, am sure is not the fact, you can give a portion to any inmates of your great hive in Printing-house-square who may be prone to use their stings too freely.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A Bee-master.
Tunbridge Wells, August 2.
The origin of the following letter was a very foolish letter which a correspondent sent to The Times. His cannot be the deliberate conviction of anyone acquainted with bees. Perhaps he was offended that no notice was taken of a very unsatisfactory hive patented by him. But as I could not praise, I thought it unnecessary to blame.
A Hornet Among the Bees
To the Editor of The Times.
Sir,—It is well that bees have not learnt to read The Times. Did they see all that your correspondent says about them, they would send a battalion to his residence, and ere they returned to Tunbridge Wells they would make their calumniator exhaust all his remedies for bee-stings. Had this good gentleman eaten more honey and drank less vinegar he would have written a more affectionate letter; and had he watched the habits of bees as I have done, or studied the results of the investigations of Huber, he would not surely have written with ignorance so crass. I am not irritated with him, but I am immensely jealous for the honour and good name of my bees. It is said of some crotchety people, “they have each a bee in his bonnet,” but I venture to think of your correspondent, “he has a wasp in his bonnet.” The only philosophical way by which I can account for the absurdities of this letter is that it was written, as he observes, “for our continental and transatlantic brethren,” neither of whom have any precedent or encouragement for recent Austro-Prussian misdeeds, or American democracy and its recent excesses, in the habits and instincts of bees.
“First,” says your correspondent, “with regard to remaining at peace with each other, as soon as honey-gathering is over, should any stocks betray weakness, the war of Germany against Denmark is enacted, and the invaders take all. Whatever virtues bees possess, honesty or even the slightest respect for meum et tuum is not among them.”
A grosser libel on the apiarian race was never perpetrated. Their respect for meum is so intense that they will defend their queen and home to the death. Their respect for tuum is so entire that they never touch the property of their neighbours, unless in circumstances which would justify men as well as bees in seizing the property of another.
Your correspondent perhaps robs one of his stocks of its stores, or takes away for the market or his table too much of their accumulated wealth. Winter threatens its arrival. Can this irritable old apiarian expect that 6,000 or 10,000 bees will lie down and die martyr deaths in order to confute his libellous theory of meum et tuum? Or he has neglected to feed a caste of 4,000 bees; or, instead of giving them barley-sugar, he offers them the miserly mess he recommends, and the unhappy, famished bees, like a Highland clan, set out “to lift” the means of existence. He starves his bees, and when they forage he denounces them as thieves. If a bee-master does his duty by protecting his hives, feeding the unfortunate and weak, no such freebooters will be found among his bees.
2. Your correspondent, for once, is gracious. He acquits bees of habits of intoxication. He forgets that I stated they never get drunk unless the bee-master supplies the intoxicating element. But if he will place a feeding-pan full of good Scotch ale before the hives, I will eat pan and beer and bees if they do not sip every drop, and give very unmistakable proofs that they have done so.
3. Your correspondent says: “Mr. Harbeson, a sturdy citizen of the American Republic, considers the queen a simple machine for laying eggs, absolutely under the workers’ control. I do not go these lengths, but Mr. Harbeson is far nearer the truth than your correspondent.”
There can be no doubt that this “is written for our transatlantic brethren.” It is a fine illustration for Abraham Lincoln. I hope your correspondent will not be offended if I suspect in him a machine for speaking nonsense. He has only to extend this free philosophy, to see in rose-bushes machines for growing roses, and in birds machines for building nests; in Tennyson a machine for spinning poetry, and in Lord Palmerston a machine for turning out speeches. This wretched materialistic philosophy may please the “sturdy American citizens and transatlantic brethren;” but how a sane Englishman can dare to ventilate such arrant rubbish, I know not.
His exaggerated talk about bees being regicides would electrify Red Republicans, but it is not true. That the queen, who has precedence of birth, destroys the princess next to her that might be her rival, I admitted and deplored in my letters as sad. But that bees are regicides is not fact. They never kill their queen; they love and are loyal to her, and obey her commands. I said they hate republicanism, and so they do, and so do I. No doubt your correspondent’s discoveries will charm his transatlantic brethren. But if ever a people were in want of a queen, they are. Your correspondent may like Abraham Lincoln; I infinitely prefer Queen Victoria. He says cottagers cannot make Ayrshire hives. They do cleverer things. At all events, they can try. The Ayrshire hive is octagonal, I admit; but all I said was, that my success as a bee-master led me to suspect they prefer a box similar to their combs, and therefore I intend this winter to have several hexagonal bee-hives. A suspicion of preference was all I ventured to state.
Your correspondent says: “Common sugar (lump-sugar is best) does not require to be exposed to a heat of 300° to be available to bees.” No wonder his weak stocks plunder his strong ones, for bees cannot eat and do not eat lump-sugar or brown sugar. Their lambent organisation renders it impossible. I spoke of feeding with pure sugar, and stated that it is available alone in the shape of barley-sugar only. That it can be presented boiled up in beer or water, I taught when I alluded to its being dissolved in ale. But whether in water or ale, it smears their wings, clogs their feet, and is vastly inferior in all respects to barley-sugar.
Your correspondent objects to rubbing the wound of a bee’s sting with tobacco-juice. I speak from experience. I have tried every prescription, and most assuredly I will not try his. He says:—
“If anyone has a swarm consisting of only 5,000 or 6,000 bees, let him not take the trouble of hiving it. A good swarm will weigh 4 lbs., and I have known one weigh 8 lbs. Now, 5,000 bees are computed to go to a pound, and this is not too many, for a friend of mine counted and weighed 5,020 freshly-killed bees this spring, and they only weighed 12½ ounces. Let any one, therefore, do a simple sum in mental arithmetic, and say if 15,000 to 30,000 are not within the mark, even allowing for the weight of honey earned off by the swarm.”
I mentioned 5,000 or 6,000 bees as a swarm. It is the lowest, I freely allow. But I will add to your correspondent’s knowledge. I had a caste thrown off last year, at the end of June. I despaired of its weathering the winter, but I resolved to feed it richly with barley-sugar till March. The maximum number of bees was 5,000. It had filled the lower box with at least 40 lbs. of honey by the middle of June this year. The bees had increased immensely. I opened the communication with a large super. This super has in it now not less than 26 lbs. of the whitest cells and honey I ever saw. I have shown it to many whose mouths watered for a slice of it. I never join stocks. We feed cattle on oil-cake: why not feed weakly stocks with barley-sugar? What your correspondent proposes as his explanation of 2,000 drones in a hive where there is only one queen, with, perhaps, a couple of princesses, is, like his whole philosophy, very absurd, and unworthy of a serious answer.
Your correspondent says:—
“Bees are never nursed by other bees. They are strict utilitarians, and totally devoid of sympathy. ‘Those who cannot work shall not eat,’ is a law applied with stern impartiality alike to the disabled worker and the useless drone. He, therefore, who would teach or learn a lesson in charity must look elsewhere.”
My reply to this is, I have seen the disabled bee tended with exquisite and unwearied attention, rolled in the sunshine on the bee-board, and carried or helped into their homes. His testimony is negative, mine is positive.
He concludes his letter by informing us—
“As it is, I am very desirous of making it known to our continental and American friends that these letters [in The Times] do not convey an adequate idea of the amount of knowledge of the subject possessed by British bee-masters.”
His letter, he reiterates, was written for the American market. I only hope they will not suppose that his crotchets are the measure of the amount of knowledge possessed or of the affection felt by English bee-masters.
If in his next he will mix a little honey with his ink, and eat a little at breakfast, he will do greater justice to himself.
I am, &c.,
A Bee-master.
Tunbridge Wells.
Bees, Bee-hives, and Bee-masters
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir,—I have been so annoyed at your correspondent’s attack on the good name of my bees, that I cannot resist the temptation of saying a word or two of additional defence.
That the queen is not a mere egg-laying machine obedient to mere mechanical impulses, nor her subjects mere mechanical creations obeying similar impulses with no instructive appreciation, will be evident from the following facts:—
Reaumur, the eminent naturalist, observes that after the queen-regnant has become a mother—
“The bees are constantly on the watch to make themselves useful to her and to render her every kind office. They are for ever offering her honey. They lick her with the proboscis, and wherever she goes they form a court to attend her. Even the body of a dead queen is the object of tender affection to the bees. I took a queen out of the water seemingly dead. She was also mutilated, having lost a leg. Bringing her home, I placed her amid a number of working-bees recovered from drowning also by means of warmth. No sooner did the revived workers perceive the queen in her miserable plight, than they appeared to compassionate her, and continued to lick her with their tongues until she showed signs of returning vitality, when they set up a general hum as of joy at the event.”
Huber writes:—
“I have seen the workers lavish the most tender care on such a queen, and, after her decease, surround her inanimate body with the same respect and homage as they had paid to her while living, and in the presence of these beloved remains refuse all attention to young and fertile queens who were offered to them.”
These are two facts noticed and recorded by the two most eminent and careful apiarian naturalists. They are, in the judgment of everyone able to appreciate weight of evidence, conclusive disproofs of the material and mechanical theory, and no less decisive confirmations of all I ventured to state in your columns.
The senses of the bee are no less clear protests against the mechanical theory so acceptable to “our transatlantic brethren.”
The bee leaves her house, traverses fields a mile or two distant, and returns to her home—one amid twenty contiguous ones—with unerring certainty.
The sense of touch through its antennæ is so exquisite, that in total darkness it carries on its architecture as perfectly as by day.
Its smell is possessed of unrivalled sensibility. Odours from afar are directly scented. Huber thinks it is the scent, not the colour of flowers, that attracts them.
Their power of memory is illustrated by Huber. He placed a supply of honey on the sill of an open window in autumn. The bees feasted on it for weeks. He removed the honey and closed the window during winter. Next spring the bees came to the same window, looking for supplies. Here was memory of place and circumstances lasting during half a bee’s lifetime.
Huber mentions a species of moth that attacks and plunders bee-hives; it is called the death’s-head moth. Finding out its daring depredations, he lessened the apertures of some of his hives, leaving sufficient room for the exit and entrance of the bees, but not for the entrance of the moth. This succeeded perfectly. But several hives he left undefended. In each of these undefended hives the bees raised a Avail of wax and propolis right behind their doors of entrance, making embrasures for exit and entrances through the solid wall. As soon as spring arrived and all danger was at an end, these Royal Engineers threw down their fortifications.
I need not refer to the perfect and well-known geometrical construction of the cells of a hive as evidences of design and high instinct; they combine the maximum of strength with the least expenditure of substance and the largest capacity in a given space. The equilateral triangle, the square, and the hexagon, were the only three forms of tubular cells that would leave no interstices: in the first there would be lost space in each angle; a similar disadvantage would be found in the second. The bees, by an instinct surely Divine, or in the exercise of engineering powers demonstrative of mind, have adopted the last.
Having thus disposed of your correspondent, will you allow me to select one or two of the most important practical inquiries which I have received in upwards of twenty additional letters addressed to “The Times Bee-master?” Your universal circulation is the cause of my extraordinary visitation of correspondence, and this unexpectedly-wide practical interest in bees will justify you to your readers. One asks, “How am I to begin an apiary?” Let me tell him. Buy a stock this month or next for 20s., taking care that it is not old, and weighs (inclusive of straw hive) not less than 30 lbs. Erect a shed with sloping roof projecting sufficiently to carry the rain beyond the alighting-board of the bees. The length may be 12 feet, the height about 6 feet, and width 2½ feet. Divide it into six equal sections or chambers. Make an exit in each, three inches long by two inches high. Place each hive in the centre of one of them, with its opening directly opposite the opening in the chamber. Fix below each opening in the shed a bees’ landing-board sloping at an angle of 25°. If you can afford it, buy six stock-hives. Next May cut out the top of each, as I directed in a previous letter. Place on it a board with circular hole, and a bell-glass rather narrower at the lower part than at the centre; cover each with its plaid nightcap, and you will have plenty of delicious honey in 1865.
If, however, you do not mind loss of time, build your shed this autumn, make it smooth inside to discourage spiders, and next April send round the country to cottagers keeping bees, and engage six good swarms, which ought not to cost more than 10s. each. In carrying them home, pin over the entrance-hole a piece of gauze, tie a towel or napkin underneath, fastening the four corners at the top, and do not jolt the young family unnecessarily. If the swarms can be had in May, and if it prove a fine summer, you may place a glass on each about the end of June. Do not forget the old adage—
“A swarm in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm in July
Is worth a fly.”
If your swarm is an early June one, you may save it by pushing three or four sticks of barley-sugar into the hive by the exit aperture once a fortnight till next March. Any little expense in feeding introduces you to your bees and helps them wonderfully, and is never a loss.
If you want to tempt the bees to feed in your own garden, sow mignonette, salvia, and sanfoin; plant plenty of raspberry, gooseberry, and currant bushes. They like lime poplars, apple-blossoms, thyme, and, above all, borage. Bees never touch double flowers. Should the early summer prove very dry, place near your bee-shed two or three soup-plates half-full of water, taking care to put in as many pebbles as each will hold. The bees require stepping-stones for their tiny feet, and otherwise they are necessary to save them from drowning.
I am giving directions to those who desire to work economically. But if you can lay out a little as an investment, and you desire to combine interest and pleasure with profit, you cannot do better than call on Neighbour, either in Regent-street or Holborn, where I have seen many varieties of hives of different prices and all of good workmanship. In answer to numerous inquiries about the Ayrshire hives, I am sorry to be obliged to answer that I have to send to Scotland for them. They may be had of Air. Bruce Taylor, Post-office, Mauchlin, Ayrshire; or of Messrs. Craig, Stewarton, Ayrshire. The three boxes in the lower or stock hive, with two supers exactly corresponding, cost me 20s. But they last for ever. Their chief value is their productiveness. Neighbours’ and Pettitt’s are far more interesting for experimental uses. The collateral system is the most elegant, but least productive; its bee-boxes are also expensive. Your correspondent’s hive (which I ought previously to have referred to) is no improvement, and its architect has so bad an opinion of the moral character of bees, that were they to know it was his, they would desert it. There are people to whom bees never take, and there are hives they invariably sicken in. I do not like the nadir system recommended in The Times by “A Rector.” Bees naturally ascend or traverse the same plane, but mostly preferring ascent. “Excelsior” is their favourite aspiration. In answer to another inquiry, do I approve using stupifying fumes, as of puff-ball, &c., in order to expel the bees from supers full of honey?—I say, certainly not. It may not injure the bees if judiciously administered. Some highly recommend it. But it is not necessary. The bees will leave the super on its being detached from the hive and carried to a little distance, and will return in an hour or two to their home and their queen. The only case in which I have recourse to fumigation is when any portion of the comb, through accidental admission of wet, has become mouldy. A few whiffs of puff-ball may be injected, by means of an instrument sold for this purpose, during five minutes. As soon as the humming noise ceases, lift the hive and cut out the mouldy portion of the comb, replace it, and in twenty minutes the bees will again be at work. This is the only case in which I like to employ either this or tobacco-smoke, which answers as well if not too long continued.
Your apiary or bee-shed should be placed as near your dwelling as possible, sheltered from the north and northeast winds, and at the greatest possible distance from poultry. Frequently, but quietly and unobtrusively, visit your bees, watch them at work in your bee-glasses, or by windows in your bee-boxes. Let your children play beside them. They are fond of children, and unless violently irritated they will not injure them. I can state this from very ample experience. At the same time, it is proper to state, that some few persons are so offensive to bees that they must not approach them. Plenty of soap and water and fastidious cleanliness are essential to a bee-master’s continued popularity with his apiarian family.
I am, &c.,
A Bee-master.
Tunbridge Wells.
About Wasps
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir,—There is no sweet without a bitter. Every bee-master feels the plague of wasps this autumn of 1864; for fifteen years, the range of my experience as a bee-master, I have not seen so fierce and multitudinous bands of wasps descending on my bees on predatory incursions. I do not mean to insinuate that the wasp has no mission, I believe he has his use. He is the scavenger of our gardens, and clears off decay, putrescence, and filth of every sort. For this I give him credit, but I cannot extend to him either the affection or respect I feel for my bees. Wasps often remind me of a class of critics not found in Printing-house-square, but by no means rare in other quarters. Like wasps, they ignore or pass by ripe, fragrant, and beautiful fruit, and select and gloat over incidental decay. The wasp-critic does not touch a beautiful thought in Tennyson or Longfellow; he can neither appreciate nor digest it. But if he can only discover a word misspelt or a word misprinted, or the word “octagon” accidentally used for “hexagon,” he buzzes about it for hours, and feeds on it with waspish delight. Should the editor of a respectable paper or periodical refuse his contribution, he flies to a congenial refuge, and there pours out what wasps have nearly a monopoly of—the venom identified with and peculiar to that insect.
There is also the wasp ecclesiastical. He contributes no sweet honey to the Church, and takes little interest in its good. But in Synods, Presbyteries, Convocations, he flies about, driving his sting sometimes into a bishop and sometimes into a presbyter. A sin in another he scents from afar. A virtue in a brother he cannot appreciate. He lives on decay. He sings while he feeds on it. It is his nutriment and his joy.
There is also the political wasp. He has no fixed principles, but, instead, he has a furious temper. He makes great noise, and attacks everybody right and left that comes within scent, eyesight, or earshot. His delight is proportionate to the degree in which he can sting. He cares nothing about party, or side, or leader. He spurns all organisation. He revels in wrath and fierce words and keen invective, unsweetened by a grain of genial feeling, or an expression softened by the humanities and amenities of debate, and unillumined by wit or humour.
There is the wasp social. He is impersonated in the burglar. Were you to see the wasps this autumn rushing into my hives, sometimes by a sudden dash, at other times by stealth, you would instantly acknowledge in them the type of the thief and the burglar. But my bees are better prepared for the wasp’s reception than London house-holders for thieves. He runs the gauntlet every time he enters. Through my glass observatory windows I watch the conflict. One bee, half his size, seizes him by the throat, another gives him a taste of his sting, and two or three watchers seize him by the legs and drag him out. I have hit on an admirable plan of keeping him off, well worth disclosing to every bee-master. I place at the entrance of the hive a stick of barley-sugar a couple of inches long. This brings to the entrance a dozen of bees, who thankfully feed on it. There is thus secured an additional guard at the gates. The moment the wasp alights, the whole posse fly at him and drive him away. Another plan is to fill half-full a wine-bottle with beer and sugar. Incidentally a bee may look in, but the wasps, whose scent is perfect, rush in and are drowned. It is a sacred duty devolving on every bee-master to exterminate these Arabs, Bedouins, and corsairs. They lay up no stores for themselves—they do nothing for the support or enjoyment of man. They use their stings, not like bees, in self-defence, but in sheer wickedness. They are professional thieves. Like the bees of a correspondent of yours, they have no respect for tuum, and having no meum, they care nothing. Living at the expense of others, without consulting the convenience or goodwill of anybody, they richly deserve what their extermination will pay for—sulphur, gunpowder, and boiling water. Let every bee-master give sixpence to every boy who destroys a wasps’-nest.
The wasp builds its nest generally underground. Their cells are hexagonal. The house is built of paper, fabricated by this insect long before its manufacture was discovered by man. With their powerful jaws they tear off decayed wood, which they moisten with a sort of gum or glue secreted from themselves. They form this into a kind of pulp and spread it out into thin sheets, with which they roof in and surround their cells. So far they are good paper manufacturers; but I have not heard of their paper being used in the service of man. They seem also to understand the laws of heat. Everybody knows that double windows are warmer than single ones, the atmospheric air being a good non-conductor. The wasps surround themselves with several walls of paper, leaving spaces between, and thus not only keep out the cold, but render the entrance of damp all but impossible. The combs of the wasp are built in horizontal tiers, supported by pillars. In this respect they are builders as well as papermakers. They are also admirable sappers and miners. They tunnel a covered way from their nest to the open air, and very often, instead of using a deserted mole or mouse hole, they excavate a round chamber of really fine proportions. It is truly matter of regret that so much capable talent should be prostituted to so much dishonesty. Unhappily, thieves and pick-pockets are generally very clever. Yet reformatories do operate real transformations of thieves; but no plan that philanthropy has yet devised has turned a wasp into a kind, honest, and respectable member of society. He is incapable of transmutation. He is worthy of the special study of Darwin. The death penalty, I unhesitatingly affirm, is due to every wasp that enters a bee-garden. The razing of his house, the desolation of its furniture, and the dislodgment and destruction of the whole clan, have become a sacred duty. Even the Quaker, who objects to the sentence of death on murderers, would consent to the doom of the wasp. I cannot believe there were wasps in Paradise of old. Though no prophet, nor prophet’s son, I confidently predict there will be no wasps in Paradise that is to be, nor will there be waspish tempers, or passions, or propensities. Of all ugly things on earth, next to the serpent, a hornet is the ugliest, the most thievish, and the most dishonest You can neither tame nor turn the wicked imp. He is a thief from his birth—a bee-cide by habit; feeding on corruption, and full of wickedness. If, instead of killing sparrows and blackbirds and thrushes, because they take a few currants, while they destroy slugs and vermin, and many of them regale springtide with song, the farmers would set about destroying wasps, they would find as much amusement, and do vastly more good. I have a lurking suspicion that some of those apiarians who speak against bees, and call them thieves and regicides, must have wasps, not bees, in their hives. Let me beg of these irritable gentlemen, who never cease buzzing, to examine their hives. Let me remind them that wasps are bigger and longer than bees; are surrounded with concentric yellow circles, emit a subterranean sort of hum, neither treble, tenor, nor bass, and, after a little study on their part, may be easily distinguished from bees. Above all, let me intreat them to give up feeding on wasps’ food, and, if they have no honey of their own, let me offer them half a bar, in order to elevate their taste or improve their temper.
Let me also beg all that value their lives to examine well every apple, pear, and peach they eat; for these venomous insects may be seen this year ensconced under the skin, and if admitted within the mouth they will sting the throat, and, as in several recent cases, the sufferers will die. Do not conclude I am uncharitable; I am not so. It is no charity to connive at theft and murder. I am satisfied that killing wasps is no murder. Had Peter the Hermit or Walter the Penniless lived in my garden, and witnessed these wicked vagabonds trying every hive, worrying my bees and stealing my honey, they would have preached a crusade against wasps. In one respect they are unfortunate; they have no queen, no subordination or reverence for law and order. They are genuine Red Republicans—Marats and Robespierres, and richly deserve the worst they get.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A Bee-Master.
Tunbridge Wells.
The Bee-master’s Sermon
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir,—The object of my letters has been to open up to the cottager a means of revenue very agreeable, but very much neglected or mismanaged. I have directed your attention to bee-keeping, not as a fancy pursuit, or as an interesting entomological investigation, but as a practical and real work. Hence I have not discussed a variety of toys used as bee-hives, very pretty and very tasteful to the eye of a sentimental aparian, but so bothering to the bees that they wish such houses were at the bottom of the sea. Simplicity of structure, directness of use, and availableness for deprivation of honey, and yet preservation of the honey-makers, ought to be the guiding law. Bees don’t like to be paid too many, too obsequious, or too patronising attentions. I want, however, in this closing letter to turn my largest hive into a pulpit, and to preach a short apiarian homily to English cottagers, which I know they will read, and hope they will “mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”
1. They may carry from the hive to the cottage-hearth a lesson of industry. During work the bees are so intensely absorbed in their duty, that they ignore every distracting and diverging object and interest. They have learnt well a text their masters would do well to copy: “Not slothful in business.” There is no getting on in this world of ours without hard work. It is not work and plenty of it that kills people, but worry.
2. Bees teach a lesson of loyalty. They are monarchical by conviction and in practice. They love a queen, whose sovereignty is motherhood, and whose service is perfect freedom. They detest your republics, and democracies, and radicalism in all its phases.
3. Bees are immensely attached to their homes. They are “keepers at home.” No mother of a family gets on by gadding about and gossiping from house to house.
4. Bees are models of cleanliness. The care with which they remove filth of all kinds is something remarkable. They plainly believe what many Christians say, “cleanliness is nearest to godliness.” The cottager cannot in this matter do better than follow the example of these admirable sanitary philosophers.
5. Bees set a beautiful example of Christian sympathy. I have seen a wounded bee, accidentally hurt, carried out from the hive and laid tenderly on the bee-board in the warm sunshine. One bee would lick the sufferer with his tongue from head to foot; another would roll him over and over in the sunshine; and at sunset they would carry him in to his sick bed. I do not complain of want of such sympathy among the poor. I have seen much of it in the homes of the most destitute, and witnessed personal attentions and sacrifices and services in a district surrounding Brewer’s-court ragged schools, which have never been exceeded, if equalled, in the houses of the great.
6. Bees are very fond of fresh air. A hive is one of the best ventilated homes; and I have some doubt about the wisdom or success of the various arrangements made by some bee-masters for increasing the ventilation of their hives. In a hot and sultry day I have seen successive lines of bees take up their position at the mouth of the hive, and, joining the tips of their wings, work these fanners for ten minutes, and then retire and let the second parallel line come to the front and continue the same process. This example is not efficiently followed in city or cottage. People who are most careful about what they eat and drink and put into their stomachs, are utterly careless what they allow to enter their lungs. Now, the truth is, it is easier to poison a man through his lungs than through his stomach. My bees would die in a London bed-room in twelve hours.
7. Bees are very early risers. The first ray of sunshine is their matin bell, and by seven o’clock P.M. they are most of them at home. People that live long and are healthy differ in many of their habits, but generally agree in being early risers. Early light has sanitary as well as photographic influences, which post-meridian light is a stranger to. “Early to bed and early up” is an admirable maxim—an axiom among bees, and it should be a habit among rational men.
8. Bees are peaceful and peacemakers. This will appear a hasty statement to all who remember that bees have stings. But a little thought will justify what I say. Bees never give way to aggressive warfare. They never attack those who do not attack their queen or their homestead. Their stings are purely defensive. This is a very curious fact, and very suggestive also. If they had no stings at all, they would be an argument for the Peace Society. But as it is, they prove that the best defence of home is a good preparation to repel the aggressor. When, therefore, Mr. Bright preaches the duty of breaking up the navy and disbanding the army, it would be the conduct of a great hornet impressing on bees the duty of extracting their stings. Were the bees such simpletons as to listen to his plausible logic, and give up their stings, they would be surrounded by swarms of wasps, who would very soon make them give up their honey. As if to teach the bees that their weapons are to be used only in the last extremity, every bee knows that the use of his sting is followed by its inevitable loss and his destruction. It sticks where it strikes, and the violence done to the bee ends always in death. While admiring Mr. Bright’s love of peace, I hope every bee-keeper in England will prefer the bees’ way of maintaining it. So sweet and short is a bee-master’s sermon.
I think I have shown in these letters that morals, money, country, and enjoyment may all be helped a little by keeping bees; and, therefore, that I have done some good by directing attention to these “great and marvellous works” of One who still gives his care to a bee-hive and to Buckingham Palace.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A Bee-Master.
Tunbridge Wells.