562 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE • 



given place might pass unnoticed, wliile a number of colonies at the 

 same place would be a nuisance. The habits of the bees, the line of 

 flight, their temper and disposition of the colonies, either separately or 

 when collected together in numbers, might all furnish matter of more 

 or less weight in reaching a conclusion. So also the character of the 

 annoyance or injury done to the complainant must be a substantial ele- 

 ment. In the only reported case involving this question it was charged, 

 and the court found there was proof, "that during the spring and sum- 

 mer months the bees so kept" — 140 colonies on an adjoining city lot 

 and within 100 feet of plaintiff's dwelling — "by defendants greatly in- 

 terfered with the quiet and proper enjoyment and possession of plain- 

 tiff's premises, driving him, his servants and guests from his garden 

 and grounds, and stinging them, interfered with the enjoyment of his 

 home, and with his family while engaged in the performance of their 

 domestic duties, soiling articles of clothing when exposed on his prem- 

 ises, and made his dwelling and premises unfit for habitation." These 

 facts were held to constitute a nuisance, against which the plaintiff was 

 entitled to injunction and nominal damages. These facts just recited, 

 however, probably present an extreme case, the immediate proximity of 

 so many colonies being, no doubt, persuasive evidence that the annoy- 

 ance suffered by the plaintiff was due to the defendant's use of his 

 premises. Greater difficulty would be experienced in reaching such a 

 conclusion if there were no colonies stationed in the immediate vicinity, 

 a thing entirely possible under the common belief that the insects go 

 considerable distances for their stores. 



So it may be said of bees, as of other property, that no hard and fast 

 rule can be laid down by which to determine in advance whether the 

 presence of bees in any given numbers or at any given point will amount 

 to a nuisance. But, not being a nuisance of themselves, as a matter of 

 law, and absent also any general State enactment declaring them to be 

 such, bees will not, und^r any circumstances be presumed to be a nuis- 

 ance, but the matter will rest in the proof adduced, with the burden 

 upon the party alleging the affirmative. But they may, upon proof of 

 particular facts showing all the elements necessary to the existence of 

 a nuisance, he condemned as such, either of a private or public charac- 

 ter, as the nature of the injury might decide. 



Predicated upon the theory advanced in the beginning that courts 

 would now, if the matter were called in question, decide that bees are 

 domestic animals, and it having already become a matter of legislative 

 recognition that they are subject to communicable diseases, a question 

 arises as to the liability of the keeper of diseased bees. At common 

 law it was an indictable offense, which has been reenacted iby statute in 

 most of the states, to take a domestic animal sufferings from a com- 

 municable disease into a public place or to turn it into the highway so 

 that the disease might be communicated to the animals of other per- 

 sons. It could hardly be said to be less culpable to knowingly keep dis- 

 eased bees, which, by their nature may not be restrained or confined, to 

 spread disease to the apiaries of other owners. If to turn a horse with 

 glanders or a sheep with footrot into the highway is a public nusiance, 



