AXGER OF BEES. 



15 



AXGER OF BEES. 



take a grab from its neighbor, and the re- 1 

 suit was a free fight in a very short time. I 



There is nothing in the world that will i 

 induce bees to sting with such wicked reck- ' 

 lessness as to have them get to quarreling I 

 over combs or honey left exposed when they j 

 have nothing to do. From a little careless- i 

 ness in this respect, and nothing else, whole 

 apiaries have been so demoralized that people 

 were stung when passing along the stieet 

 several rods distant. During the middle of \ 

 the day. when bees were busily engaged on 

 the tlowers. during a good yield, we have 

 frequently left filled combs standing on the 

 top of a hive from noon until supi'er time 

 without a bee touching them: but to do this 

 after a hard rain, or at a time when little or 

 no honey is to be gathered in the fields, 

 might result in the ruin of several colonies, 

 and you and your bees being voted a nui- 

 sance by the whole neighborhood. 



Almost every season we get more or less 

 letters complaining that the bees have sud- 

 denly become so cross as to be almost un- 

 manageable, and these letters come along 

 in .July, after the clover and linden have be- 

 gun to slack up. The bees are not so very 

 unlike mankind after all. and all you have 

 to do is to avoid opening the hives for a few 

 days, until they get used to the sudden dis- 

 appointment f 'f having the avenues through 

 which they were getting wealth so rapidly, 

 cut oflE. After a week or ten days they will 

 be almost as gentle as in the times when 

 they gathered half a gallon of honey daily, 

 if you are only careful about leaving hives 

 open too long, or leaving any bits of honey 

 or comb about. 



It is not easy to explain why bees sting so 

 remorselessly and vindictively after having 

 had a taste of stolen sweets, yet nearly all 

 the experience we have had of trouble with 

 stinging has been from this very cause. 

 Bees from colonies that have a habit of rob- 

 bing will buzz about one's ears and eyes 

 for hours, seeming to delight in making one 

 nervous and fidgety if they succeed in so do- 

 ing, and they not only threaten, but often- 

 times inflict, the most painful stings, and 

 then buzz about in an infuriated way. as if 

 frantic because unable to sting one a dozen 

 times more after their sting is lost. The 

 colonies that furnish this class of bees are 

 generally hybiid. or perhaps black bees 

 having just a trace of Italian blood. These 

 bees seem to have a perfect passion for fol- 

 lowing one about, and buzzing before the 

 nose from one side to the other until one 

 gets cross-eyed in trying t-o foUow their er- 



ratic oscillations), in a way that is most es- 

 pecially provoking. One such colony an- 

 noyed us so much while extracting that we 

 killed the queen, although she was very pro- 

 lific, and substituted a fuU-blood Italian. 

 Although it is seldom a pure Italian follows 

 one about in the manner mentioned, yet an 

 occasional colony may contain bees that do 

 it; at least we have found such, where the 

 workers were all three-landed. Ihat it is 

 possible to have an apiary without any such 

 disagreeable bees, we have several times 

 demonstrated: but oftentimes you will have 

 to discard some of your very best honey- 

 gatherers, to be entirely rid of them. 



On occasions like this it is advisable to use 

 robber-traps. See Robbers. 



With a little practice the apiarist will tell 

 as soon as he comes near the apiary whether 

 any angry bees are about, by the high key- 

 note they utter when on the wing. It is 

 well known that with meal feeding we have 

 perfect tranquillity although bees from every 

 hive in the apiary may be working on a 

 square yard of meal. Xow. should we sub- 

 stitute honey for the meal, we should have a 

 perfect uproar, for a taste of honey found in 

 the open air during a dearth of pasturage, 

 or at a time when our bees have learned to 

 get it by stealing instead of honest industry, 

 seems to have the effect of setting every bee 

 crazy. In some experiments to determine 

 how and why this result came about, we had 

 considerable experience with angry bees. 

 After they had been robbing, and had be- 

 come tranquil, we tried them with dry su- 

 gar: the quarrelsome bees fought about it 

 for a short time, but soon resumed their reg- 

 ular business of hanging about the weU-filled 

 hives, trjing to creep into even- crack and 

 crevice, and making themselves generally 

 disagreeable all arouud. If a hive was to 

 be opened, they were into it almost before 

 the cover was raised, and then resulted a 

 pitched battle between them and the in- 

 mates: the operator was sure to be stung by 

 one or both parties, and. pretty soon, some 

 of the good people indoors would be asking 

 what in the world made the bees so awfully 

 cross, saying that they even came indoors 

 and tried to sting. Xow. why could they 

 not work jieaceably on the sugar as they do 

 on the meal, or the clover-blossoms in -June? 

 "We dampened the sugar with a sprinkler, 

 and the bees that were at work on it soon 

 started for home with a load: then began 

 the high key-note of rolbing. faint at first, 

 then louder and louder, until we began to be 

 almost frightened at the mischief that might 



