348 THE INSECT WORLD. 



the bee gets a reinforcement, and very soon returns to the combat 

 with a determined battahon. All this is, it seems to us, intelligence. 



We have just said that there are sentinels at the entrance of ever); 

 hive. They touch with their antenute each individual that wishes tc 

 penetrate into the house. Hornets, the Death's-head Sphinx, slugs. 

 &c., often try to introduce themselves into the hive. In that case, or 

 the appeal of the watchful porters, all the bees combine their efforts 

 to defend the entrance to their habitation. It would be impossibk 

 for them, in fact, to stop the ravages of their enemies when onc( 

 entered into the interior. When a sphinx has succeeded in intro 

 ducing itself into a hive, it sits down and drinks the honey in grea 

 bumpers, devouring all the provisions : and the unfortunate proprie 

 tors of the house are obliged to emigrate. To stop the entrance o 

 moths which fly by night, the bees contract, and sometimes barricade 

 their door with a mixture of wax and propolis. When a slug or an 

 other large animal has managed to introduce itself into the interioi' 

 they kill it and wrap it up in a shroud of propolis, as we have alread 

 related. 



However, they are quite helpless against certain microscopic pan 

 sites which sometimes attack them. The bee-louse, which has bee, 

 described and drawn by Reaumur in one of his Memoirs,* and th 

 parasite which was described in 1866 by M. Duchemin, the Suga 

 Acariis, which is found in the liquid honey of those hives which ai 

 attacked hy the disease called the rot {pourriture)^ are the mo; 

 serious enemies of the bee. The Gallerias are also terrible enemi( 

 to them. Every hive thus attacked is ruined. These destructi^ 

 insects attack also the wild bees, drive them from their nests, ar 

 destroy the wax of the cakes forming the comb. The Galkr. 

 impudently makes his home in the houses of bees, wild as well : 

 domesticated. 



The habits of bees in their wild state, which make their nests 

 the trunks of trees and other cavities, do not differ from those 

 domesticated bees. Only the latter become tame with man, gettii 

 used to those who look after them, and becoming less aggressi 

 towards strangers. 



Apiculture, or bee-keeping, is still at the present day an importa 

 business, although honey has lost a great deal of its utility since t 

 introduction of sugar into Europe. Without entering into ma 



that large animals, such as horses or oxen, tied up in the neighbourhood of a b 

 hive, and which have disturbed the bees, die in consequence of stings received fr* 

 them. 



* Tome v., planche 36. 



